W'i^h 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



0DDD14E'^DDD 



SCIENTIFIC LONDON 



BERNARD H.' BECKER. 



Juvat integros accedere fonteg 

Atque haurire. 



D. APPLETON & CO., NEW YORK. 

1875. 






Gift 

Mrs. H. C. Bolton 

1912 



PEEFACE 



On becoming a frequent visitor at the meetings of 
learned Societies, I was astonished to find that the 
written records of their deeds were few and far 
between, and that, with the exception of Weld's 
" History of the Eoyal Society," but little connected 
narrative had been produced on a subject of great 
and increasing interest. Facts of inestimable value 
lay scattered through endless volumes of *' Trans- 
actions" and *' Proceedings," but these treasures 
were not arranged in a form accessible to the 
general reader. According to my lights I have 
striven, in unambitious fashion, to supply this gap 
in the literature of science, and in the little book 
now offered to the public have attempted to describe 
in a compact form the rise, progress, and present 
condition of those great Scientific Institutions of 
which London — and for that matter England — is 
justly proud. 



VI PREFACE. 

Both in the collection and arrangement of material 
for these papers — which originally appeared in the 
columns of Iron — I have received ready and valuable 
aid from the officers of various institutions, and I take 
this opportunity of tendering my hearty thanks to Pro- 
fessor Huxley, to Major Donnelly, to Mr. W. Spottis- 
woode, and to Mr. Henry Cole; to Mr. H. T. Wood and 
Mr. Davenport, of the Society of Ai'ts ; to Mr. Walter 
White, of the Eoyal Society ; to Mr. Whittall, of the 
Statistical Society ; to Mr. Latimer Clark and Mr. G. 
E. Preece, of the Society of Telegraph Engineers; to 
Mr. Trenham Peeks, of the Eoyal School of Mines ; 
to Mr. Norris, of the Birkbeck Institute ; to Mr. H. 
W. Bates, of the Eoyal Geographical Society ; to 
Mr. Forrest, of the Institution of Civil Engineers; 
and especially to Colonel Charles Manby, to whose 
frequent counsel and friendly supervision I am deeply 
indebted. 

It only remains for me to add that, however much 
the array of facts in this little volume is due to the 
courtesy of scientific friends, the only person respon- 
sible for the opinions advanced is 

The Author. 

October 10th, 1874. 



CONTENTS 



L PAGE 

The Eoyal Society . . . . . . . . 1 

II. 

The Royal Institution 27 

III. 
The Society of Arts '53 

IV. 

The Institution of Civil Engineers . . . . . 72 

V. 

The Chemical Society 136 

VI. 
The Department of Science and Art .... 149 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

VII. PAGE 

The London Institution 189 

VIII. 
The Birkbeck Institute 201 

IX. 
The Gresham Lectures 215 

X. 

The Society of Telegraph Engineers .... 231 

XL 
The Museum op Practical Geology 248 

XII. 

The British Association for the Advancement of Science 266 

XIII. 
The Statistical Society , . 278 

XIV. 
The Royal Geographical Society 300 



SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

I. 

THE EOYAL SOCIETY. 

To England belongs the honour of being the first 
country after Italy to establish a society for the in- 
vestigation and advancement of physical science. 
The Koyal Society, the most ancient and illustrious of 
existing scientific bodies, was founded in 1660. The 
troubles of the great Kebellion were healed — at least 
for a time — by the restoration of the Stuarts, and the 
minds of men, relieved for a while from political 
anxiety, turned with ardour towards the study of 
science. " The period had arrived when that experi- 
mental philosophy to which Bacon had held the torch, 
and which had already made considerable progress, 
especially in Italy, was finally established on the 
ruins of arbitrary figments and partial inductions." 

B 



2 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

By degrees was formed a group of pliilosophers who 
began to knock at the door of truth, ''at that door 
which Newton was destined to force open." These 
were the founders of the Eoyal Society. 

The road had been admirably prepared by Bacon, 
and the disciples of the great master of inductive 
philosophy were not slow in carrying out the plan of 
a learned society as sketched in the " New Atlantis." 
Among these were Eobert Boyle, Lord Brouncker, Dr. 
Wallis, Elias Ashmole — who has given his name to a 
museum at Oxford — the celebrated Oldenburg, and 
last, but not least, that Christopher Wren who was 
destined to replace the old Gothic Cathedral of St. 
Paul's, which, at the period referred to, was the 
central spot of busy London, by the present noble 
structure. As early as 1645, and amid all the turmoil 
of civil war, a few choice siDirits had been in the 
habit of assembling for the purpose of discoursing 
on experimental philosophy, sometimes at Dr. God- 
dard's lodgings in "Wood Street, and occasionally at 
the Bull's Head Tavern in Cheapside, where the 
sacred fire was fanned by the intercourse of kmdred 
spirits, but owing probably to the unsettled condition 
of public affairs, nothing was done in the way of 
organizing a learned body. 

It chanced, however, that on the 28th November, 
1660, several of those who had been in the habit of 



THE KOYAL SOCIETY. 3 

meeting from time to time were assembled at Gresham 
College, to hear a lecture on astronomy, by Christo- 
pher Wren, who at that time was one of the resident 
professors at the old Gresham mansion in Bishops- 
gate. After the lecture a list of names was drawn 
up, and the number of members fixed at fifty-five. 
On the 6th March, 1661, the Society proceeded to the 
election of a president. The choice of the members 
fell upon Sir Eobert Moray, who, according to Burnet, 
was the life and soul of the institution. Sir Eobert 
being a member of the Privy Council, and in great 
favour with Charles II., was charged by the king, who, 
if he never said a foolish thing, certainly did a wise 
one on this occasion, to assure the growing Society of 
the royal sympathy and protection. A little more 
than a year after its foundation the Society was formed 
into a corporation by • royal charter. It was soon 
found necessary to amend this document, and a 
second charter was obtained from the king, and sealed 
on the 22nd of April, 1663. A third charter, con- 
ceding to the Eoyal Society Chelsea College, and 
some additional privileges, was granted in 1669, but 
the charter of 1663 is still the fundamental law of 
the Society. This document declares the king him- 
self to be the founder and patron of the Society, which 
consists of a president, a council of twenty, and an 
unlimited number of Fellows. Lord Brouncker was 



4 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the first president, William Ball the treasurer, John 
Wilkins and Henry Oldenburg the two secretaries, Sir 
Eobert Moray and the celebrated Boyle members of the 
council. 

Lord Brouncker was at this time Chancellor to the 
Queen, and had already made himself a name by his 
mathematical studies. Two remarkable discoveries 
were made by him. He was the first to introduce 
continued fractions, and to give a series for the quad- 
rature of a portion of the equilateral hyperbola. 

The first meeting of the Council after the conces- 
sion of the new charter took place on the 13th May, 
1663, the Society then consisting of 115 members. 
By the following November the number had increased 
to 130, of whom eighteen were noblemen, twenty-two 
baronets and knights, forty-seven esquires, thirty-two 
doctors, two bachelors of theology, two masters of arts, 
and eight were foreigners. 

In August, 1663, King Charles II. presented the 
Eoyal Society with the mace at present in their 
possession. This mace — which is made of silver, 
richly gilt, and w^eighs 190 oz. avoirdupois — fills an 
important office in the Society. No meeting can be 
legally held without it, and the same practice respect- 
ing it prevails in the Eoyal Society as in Parliament. 
In the House of Commons, when the Speaker is in 
the chair and the mace on the table, any member 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 5 

may rise to address the House. When the Speaker 
leaves the chair the mace is taken off the table, and 
when it is carried out of the building the assembly 
is no longer a House. 

Great interest attaches to the mace of the Eoyal 
Society from its having long been supposed to be the 
identical "bauble" removed by the command of 
Ohver Cromwell. This, however, has been shown by 
Mr. Weld to be an erroneous belief. The royal mace 
used during the reign of Charles I. was broken up 
with the rest of the crown jewels, and an entirely 
new mace was made for the Commonwealth. This 
was ornamented with flowers instead of the cross and 
ball at the top, with the arms of England and Ireland 
instead of those of the late king. The mace, still in 
the possession of the Eoyal Society, is a truly royal one, 
consisting of a stem handsomely chased with a running 
pattern of the thistle, terminated at the upper end by 
an m^n-shaped head surmounted by a crown, ball, and 
cross. On the head are embossed figures of a rose, 
harp, thistle, and fleur-de-lys, on each side of which 
are the letters C. E. 

The year 1664 was marked by great acti^dty in the 
Eoyal Society. Eight committees were formed for 
prosecuting researches in different directions. In the 
month of June Sir John Cutler founded a chair of 
Mechanics, and, with the consent of the Eoj^al Society, 



6 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

lie assigned to the celebrated Hooke a ]3ension of fifty 
pounds a year, leaving to the Society the care of fixing 
the number of lectures and their subject. Hooke was 
also made curator, with a salary of thirty pounds, and 
apartments were assigned him in Gresham College, 
where the Society continued to hold its meetings. 

On the 6th March, 1665, appeared the first number 
of '' Philosophical Transactions." This rej)ort was 
published by Oldenburg, and submitted to the Council 
of the Society. During this year the plague proved a 
serious interruption to the weekly meetings of the 
Society, and actually compelled Oldenburg to get the 
seventh and eighth numbers of the '* Transactions" 
printed at Oxford, on account of the impossibility of 
finding printers in London. 

Meetings were held at uncertain intervals until 
February, 1666. On the 21st of this month the 
Society met again at Gresham College, under the 
presidency of Lord Brouncker, and a noteworthy 
event took place. It was decided that a gift of one 
hundred pounds made to the Society by Mr. Colwall, 
should be employed in purchasing a collection of 
rarities found by Mr. Hubbard. This collection was 
the nucleus of a museum, which became in time the 
richest in London. Many presents came to Oldenburg 
from abroad, the correspondence of this active member 
having assumed immense proportions. Among the 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 7 

curious objects in this collection was ''the skin of a 
Moor, tanned, with the beard and hair white ; " but 
more worthy of observation was "a clock whose move- 
ments are derived from the vicinity of a loadstone," 
and so adjusted as to " discover the distance of 
countries at sea by the longitudes." This clock and 
Hooke's magnetic watch were apparently the pearls of 
the collection, and the direct ancestors of the electrical 
clock of the present day. 

The great fire of London produced a temporary 
migration of the Eoyal Society. It is true that they 
were not actually burnt out of Gresham College, but 
that building was seized upon as a temporary Ex- 
change, and the philosophers, elbowed out of the 
City, found hospitable welcome at Arundel House. 
Henry Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, not 
content with putting his house at the disposition of 
the Society, presented them with a magnificent library, 
the germ of which was formed by Matthias Corvinus, 
King of Hungary. 

In 1667, at Arundel House, was performed the 
remarkable experiment of transfusing the blood of a 
sheep into the veins of a man, the subject of the 
operation being a poor devil of a student named 
Arthur Coga, who for the consideration of one guinea 
of the lawful money of the realm consented to lose 
eight ounces of his own blood and receive into his 



8 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

veins fourteen ounces of slieep's blood. Pepys saw 
this Coga at a tavern, and describes him " as a Httle 
frantic, a poor debauched man." The experiment, if 
in corpore vili, was attended with no evil consequences 
to the patient, which is more than could be said for 
the Continental experiments made about the same 
time, which caused the death of sundry persons, and 
brought the transfusion of blood into complete dis- 
credit. The mechanical science of the Society found 
ample recognition at Court, Catharine of Braganza 
requesting this learned body to produce for her use a 
thermometer, which was duly made by Hooke. 

The year 1671 was marked by the rise of the 
greatest luminary of the Eo^^al Society. A young 
candidate was proposed for the honour of fellowship, 
one Isaac Newton, professor of mathematics at the 
University of Cambridge. Newton had already made 
his mark, having invented the reflecting telescope. 
The actual instrument constructed by his own hands 
is now in the possession of the Eoyal Society, and 
is justly esteemed one of its most precious relics. 
Newton was elected on the 11th of January, 1672, 
and on the 8th of February communicated to the 
Society his researches into the nature of light. The 
publication of these inquiries in the "Transactions" 
aroused a storm of opposition. 

Hooke in England, and Huyghens abroad, attacked 



THE KOYAL SOCIETY. 9 

not only his conclusions, but the accuracy of the 
experiments on which they were based. Although 
much harassed by the controversy, Newton replied 
within a few months in a manner which firmly estab- 
lished his general doctrines. 

Among the secretaries of this period figures the 
name of John Evelyn, and among the foreign corres- 
pondents the celebrated Leuwenhoeck, in whose hands 
the microscope finally became a useful scientific 
instrument. Leuwenhoeck not only transmitted his 
valuable observations to the Eoyal Society, but 
bequeathed to that body twenty-six microscopes, the 
glasses of which he had polished himself. 

Great names now appear on the roll. Flamsteed, 
a Fellow of the Society, was appointed astronomical 
observer at Greenwich. Two years later Edmund 
Halley was also elected a Fellow on his return from 
St. Helena, where he had been observing the stars of 
the Southern hemisphere. In 1684 Dr. Denis Papin 
— the inventor of the famous Digester — was named 
curator, on condition of making an experiment at 
every general meeting of the Society ; and the year is 
also remarkable as that in which Samuel Pepys was 
elected president. Of no " considerable " family, 
being actually the son of a tailor, this remarkable man 
and delightful gossip was educated at St. Paul's 
School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he 



10 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

left no particular mark. In 1655, when only twenty- 
three years of age, he married a girl of fifteen, to 
whose family connections he possibly owed part of his 
advancement. Twenty-nine years later he took his 
seat as president of the Eoyal Society. 

No date is more justly celebrated in the annals of 
this august Society than that of the 28th of April, 
1686. At the ordinary meeting held on that day, 
Dr. Vincent presented the manuscript of the first book 
of the immortal work of Newton, " Philosophise 
Naturalis Principia Mathematica." The Society 
wished to print, at its own expense, the work which 
was dedicated to it, but the finances of the institution 
had been so terribly depleted by the pubhcation of 
Willoughby's " Be Historia Piscium," that even the 
salaries of the regular officers were in arrear. 
Members did not pay their subscriptions, and some of 
them, like Newton, were specially exempted from pay- 
ment of the yearly fifty-two shillings, on account of 
the inadequacy of their means. Finally, Halley took 
the risk of publishing the " Principia " on his own 
shoulders, a deed sufficient to immortalize him had he 
done nothing fm^ther for the advancement of science. 

When it is remembered that the volume contained 
sixty-four sheets, and above a hundred diagrams cut 
in wood, it is wonderful that Halley should have 
performed the laborious task of editing it in about six 



THE EOYAL SOCIETY. 11 

months. Halley's troubles were added to very consider- 
ably by the reluctance of Newton to publish the third 
book of the ^^Principia" — ''De Systemate Mundi." 
Hooke, perhaps the greatest mechanical genius of 
his own or any other age, felt himself outraged by 
Newton having omitted in his preface all mention 
of him. Halley writes to Newton in May, 1686, that 
" Mr, Hooke has some pretensions upon the invention 
of the rule of decrease of gravity being reciprocally as 
the squares of the distances from the centre. He 
says you had the notion from him, though he owns 
the demonstration of the curves generated thereby to 
be wholly your own. How much of this is so you 
know best, as likewise what you have to do in this 
matter." In reply to this Newton declared his inten- 
tion to suppress the third book altogether, and said, 
" Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady 
that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as 
have to do with her. I found it so formerly, and now 
I am no sooner come near her again than she gives 
me warning." Halley's invincible arguments and 
entreaties fortunately prevailed on Newton not to 
suppress the third book. 

The entire work was written by Newton in about a 
year and a half, and was, as we have seen, hurried 
through the press by the indefatigable Halley. It is 
depressing to find that the circulation of the first 



12 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

edition was undoubtedly small, inasmuch as in 1692, 
when the reputation of the "Principia" was established, 
Huyghens, who was anxious for a second edition, was 
of opinion that two hundred copies would suffice. 
The volume contains the dedication to the Eoyal 
Society, a brief preface, verses by Halley in honour of 
Newton, definitions, axioms, a short book on unre- 
sisted motion, a second on resisted motion, and a third 
on the system of the universe. " Halley's verses," 
says Mr. Weld in his ''History of the Eoyal Society," 
" were somewhat altered by Bentley in the second 
edition, but the original readings were very nearly 
restored in the third." The publication of the 
" Principia" was licensed by the Eoyal Society on the 
30th June, 1686, and the imprimatur signed by 
the ubiquitous Samuel Pepys, is dated on the fifth of 
the following month. 

The manuscript of the immortal " Principia," 
entirely written by Newton's own hand, is in admirable 
preservation, and is justly considered the greatest 
treasure in the possession of the Eoyal Society. 

In the years 1687-88-89, numerous important 
inventions were presented to the Society by Hooke, 
Halley, and Papin — Hooke especially pursuing his 
astronomical investigations with a huge telescope 
mounted at Gresham College. 

On the 14th June, 1699, was exhibited to the Society 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 13 

a model of Savery's condensing steam-engine. In the 
minutes it is recorded that " Mr. Savery entertained 
the Society with showing his engine to raise water by 
the force of fire. He was thanked for showing the 
experiment, which succeeded according to expectation, 
and was approved of." Savery presented the Society 
with a drawing of his engine, still preserved among 
the Society's collection of prints and drawings, and 
entitled, " An Engine for Eaising Water by Fire," by 
Thomas Savery. Doubtless Savery had a predecessor 
in the history of steam, but it will be remembered 
that although the Marquis of Worcester invented the 
steam-engine " to drive up water by fire," seen by 
Cosmo de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in opera- 
tion at Yauxliall in 1656, we are indebted to Savery 
for the introduction of a vacuum which enabled his 
engine to perform double the work of that invented by 
the Marquis of Worcester. 

On the 11th February, 1708, Newton then being 
President of the Eoyal Society, a proposition was 
submitted " concerning a new-invented boat to be 
rowed with oars moved by heat." At the two ensuing 
meetings the matter w^as again brought forward, 
accompanied by letters of recommendation from 
Leibnitz. Papin says that, inasmuch as "it is certain 
that it is a thing of great consequence to be able to 
apply the force of fire for to save the labour of men," 



14 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

and 4hat "the Parliament of England granted some 
years ago a patent to Esquire Savery for an engine he 
had invented for that purpose, and his Highness 
Charles, Landgrave of Hesse, hath also caused several 
costly experiments for the same design," he therefore 
offers with all dutiful respect " to make here an engine 
after the manner that has been i^ractised at Cassell, 
and to fit it so that it may be applied for the moving 
of ships." Dr. Papin wished much to make " the said 
Cassellian engine at his own cost," but was unable to 
furnish the necessary funds. The Eoyal Society was 
unfortunately in a similar position. 

Papin clearly saw that ships might be propelled by 
paddles moved by steam. In a paper published as 
early as 1690 in the " Acta Eruditorum," he says, 
" Without doubt oars fixed to an axis could be made 
most conveniently to revolve by om- tubes. It would 
only be necessary to furnish the piston-rod with teeth, 
which might act on a toothed wheel properly fitted 
to it, and which, being fixed on the axis to which the 
oars were attached, would communicate a rotary 
motion to it." 

Despite the squabbles between Newton and Flam- 
steed, the Eoyal Society waxed mighty under the pre- 
sidency of the author of the " Principia." On the 
death of Sir Godfrey Copley, in 1709, the interest of 
one hundred pounds became vested in the Society. 



THE EOYAL SOCIETY. 15 

For awhile this sum was given to the curator to pay 
the expenses of experiments, but was finally em^Dloyed 
in striking a gold medal of the value of five pounds, to 
be given to the author of the best experiment made 
during the year. This medal is the greatest honour 
at the disposal of the Eoyal Society. It has been 
given for a century and a quarter to the authors of 
the most brilliant discoveries made in England and 
on the continent of Europe. The first Copley medal 
was awarded to Stephen Gray — a name almost for- 
gotten until Dr. Eichardson, only the other day, vindi- 
cated the claim of the first Copley medallist to the 
title of father of electrical science. Among the 
medallists are found the names of Benjamin Franklin, 
James Bradley, John Dollond, and John Smeaton, of 
Cavendish, Priestley, Maskelyne, Hutton, Hunter, 
Rumford, Volta, Attwood, Astley Cooper, Wollaston, 
Da^'y, Brodie, Brande, Brewster, Buckland, Arago, 
Faraday and Leibig, Herschel and Leverrier. 

Towards the middle of the last century the Eoyal 
Society took an active part in promoting the change 
of style effected in England on the 2nd of September, 
1752. A few years later active measm^es were taken 
for observing the transit of Venus, which, according to 
the prediction of Halley, was to occur in 1761. The 
importance of this event in determining the exact 
distance of the sun from the earth induced the 



16 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

treasury to give ^91600 for the expedition to St. Helena 
conducted by Nevil Maskelyne, but bad weather 
interfered with the success of the observation. This 
loss, however, was recovered eight years later, when 
Messrs. Green and Banks (afterwards Sir Joseph) 
sailed for Tahiti with Captain Cook in the Endeavour, 
and obtained their observations on a cloudless day. 

The year 1784 was marked by a grand discovery — 
that of the composition of water, attributed by some 
to Cavendish and by others to Watt. Doctors dis- 
agree severely on this vexed question. It will suffice 
to remark that Arago, Dumas, and Berzelius favour 
the claims of Watt, while Whewell, Peacock, and 
Brown rule for Cavendish. 

The early part of the present century was marked 
in the Eoyal Society by the advent of Sir Humphrey 
Davy. In 1806 he read his celebrated paper " On 
some Chemical Agencies." " This," says Whewell, 
*' was a great event, perhaps the greatest event of the 
epoch." Although the war between England and 
France was at its height, Davy's work was crowned by 
the Institute of France, and the author was presented 
with a prize of three thousand francs. Davy now 
devoted his attention to the illumination of mines, and 
discovered the safety lamp, the originality of which 
was, as appears to have been the case with almost 
every scientific invention, contested at the time. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 17 

Nevertheless, the honours of discovery were awarded 
to Davy by a committee of the Eoyal Society, and the 
colHery proprietors presented him with a service of 
plate valued at £2500. In addition to this solid 
reward all the honours of the Eoyal Society were 
showered upon the illustrious chemist. He received 
the Copley medal, the Eumford medal, delivered the 
Baker Lecture several times, and in 1820 took his 
seat as president in the chair whilom occupied by 
Wren, Newton, Sloane, and Banks. - From its founda- 
tion to the present time the Eoyal Society has thus 
numbered many illustrious names among its presi- 
dents, from Lord Brouncker to Dr. Hooker, and during 
the two centuries of its existence has occupied various 
dwellings — Gresham College, then Arundel House, 
then Gresham College again, then a house in Crane 
Court, then Somerset House, and lastly, after many 
migrations, has found a home at Burlington House, 
the handsome building extending from Burlington 
Gardens to Piccadilly. The Society receives house 
room, but nothing beyond that, from the Government 
of the country, being now, as always, an entirely self- 
supporting institution. It is true that a thousand 
pounds a year are voted for the encouragement of 
original research ; but the Eoyal Society only advise 
the Ministry of the day as to the manner in which 
this sum should be employed. A Special Committee 



18 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of the Society is appointed to recommend the method 
of distributing this fund, but no portion of it finds its 
way into the coffers of the Society. 

Eooms are also provided in the wings of Burlington 
House for the Society of Antiquaries, the Linnasan 
Society, the Geological Society, the Eoyal Astro- 
nomical Society, and the Chemical Society. The 
Koyal Society has on the first floor a handsome suite 
of reception-rooms — available for the annual soirees 
of the president — and a library affording space for 
35,000 volumes. On the ground floor is a hall, an 
ante-room, and the room in which the Society holds 
its meetings. These take place once in every week 
from the third Thursday in November to the third 
Thursday in June. A record of these meetings is 
preserved in the octavo " Proceedings," and the best 
papers are printed in the quarto "Transactions." 
These last have been regularly printed since their 
institution in 1665, the series now extending to 160 
volumes. 

The Society has at its disposal four medals by 
which to mark its appreciation of scientific investiga- 
tions and remarkable discoveries. The first award 
of the Copley medal was made in 1731, and of the 
Kumford medal in 1800, to the founder himself, 
Benjamin Count Eumford, for his various discoveries 
in respect of light and heat. In the year 1825 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 19 

George IV. communicated through Sir Kobert Peel 
his intention "to found two gold medals of the value 
of fifty guineas each, to be awarded as honorary- 
premiums under the direction of the President and 
Council of the Koyal Society, in such manner as shall 
by the excitement of competition among men of science 
seem best calculated to promote the objects for which 
the Eoyal Society was instituted." The two first 
medals were awarded in 1826 to John Dalton and 
James Ivory. William IV. and her present Majesty 
have continued the gift of these Eoyal medals, and 
they are therefore annually awarded. The total 
number of Fellows, including foreign members 
(limited to fifty), is now 571. 

Besides the mace already mentioned, and the 
reflecting telescope made by Newton, the Society's 
treasures include the sun-dial cut by the great 
philosopher, when a boy, in the wall of his father's 
house, and a large collection of the portraits of 
Presidents, distinguished Fellows, and other great 
luminaries of science, painted by Van Somer, Sir 
Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Sir Joshua Keynolds, 
Sir Thomas Lawrence, and other great artists. 

These pictm-es are dispersed throughout the rooms 
occupied by the Society. On the first floor one of the 
most remarkable portraits is that of Copernicus, who, 
after travelling over Europe, studying astronomy at 



20 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Bologna, and filling tlie Chair of Mathematics at 
Eome, settled down in his quiet canonry at Frauen- 
burg, and at length embodied the result of his labours 
in the celebrated treatise, ''De Orbium Coelestium 
Eevolutionibus," to the publication of which he only 
consented a short time before his death — having 
probably a keen presentiment that the Copernican 
system would cost him his canonry, if not his life. 
The clean-shaven, priestly face is certainly a remark- 
able one, with the long upper lip and portentously long, 
sharp chin, so often found in men of genius. Near 
him hangs George Buchanan, a bald and grizzly- 
bearded Scot, looking mighty solemn at the neigh- 
bourhood of that bright black-haired Frenchman, 
Descartes. Not far from these worthies may be seen 
the portrait of Flamsteed — the first Koyal ''Astro- 
nomical Observator," to whom mankind is indebted 
for that enormous mass of astronomical observations 
which furnished the first trustworthy account of the 
fixed stars. The harsh, rugged features of Galileo 
next arrest attention, and after contemplating his 
worn face the eye rests complacently on the picture of 
Dr. Bradley, whilom Astronomer Eoyal, and the very 
heau ideal of a prosperous Churchman. Enthroned 
in an attitude of tremendous dignity, Edmund Halley 
looms on the wall — a don every inch of him, but an 
industrious secretary withal, and the composer of no 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 21 

less than eighty-one papers, published in " Philo- 
sophical Transactions," on subjects connected with 
023tics, mechanics, mathematics, astronomy, mag- 
netism, the law of mortality, &c. The great Hobbes 
looks every inch a Puritan, albeit his works enjoyed 
in his own day a very similar reputation to those of 
Strauss in our own time. John Locke, his great 
successor, appears in an admirable picture by Kneller, 
and John Evelyn looks sadly forth from Kerseboom's 
canvas. The effect of gazing upon this galaxy of 
worthies is an inexpressible feeling of smallness in 
the gazer, who is glad to change the scene and 
descend to the ante-room, where he is restored to 
a more comfortable frame of mind by the contem- 
plation of the gracious features of his Majesty King 
Charles II., the amiable, if erring, monarch, who 
apologized to his courtiers for being such an "uncon- 
scionable time in dying." The portrait by Lely 
depicts the jovial monarch in anything but evil case. 
The large eyes and drooping eyelashes give a thought- 
ful look to a face which, were it not for the bright 
scarlet over-full underlip, might well be taken for that 
of a philosopher. In one feature — the long nose — 
the kingly countenance is quite in keeping with the 
scientific visages ranged around — a preponderance of 
nose being remarkably characteristic of great thinkers 
— Newton, Locke, Boyle, and many others being 



22 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

gifted with an enormous quantity of that useful 
organ. So well was the necessity for an important 
nose recognized by Tycho Brahe, that that great 
astronomer, having had the misfortune to lose a 
portion of his in a duel, supplied the loss by an 
artificial nose made of gold, so well-formed and 
coloured as to be hardly distinguishable, it is said, 
from the natural feature. In his portrait, however, 
the nose of Tycho Brahe looks odd enough, and gives 
a singular expression to a countenance finished off by 
a pointed beard, and adorned with a pair of portentous 
moustaches. Near the portrait of the Eoyal founder 
hang the pictures of the late Duke of Sussex and of 
Earl Eosse, the builder of the famous telescope. 

On entering the large room, the well-known features 
of Newton are discovered in the central place of 
honour, over the chair occupied by the president. 
On the right of Newton is the sad, weary-looking 
countenance of Eobert Boyle, and the handsome 
features of that genial-looking cavalier. Lord Brounc- 
ker. Farther on is descried the dark bourgeois face of 
our old friend Samuel Pepys, — almost smothered in a 
tremendous full-bottomed wig, — near whom looms large 
the Johnsonian figure of Sir Joseph Banks, adorned 
with the star and riband of the Bath. Here is Sir 
Christopher "Wren, also much bewigged, turning his 
back on St. Paul's, and there, in all the glory of tights 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 23 

and Hessians, the figure of Dr. WoUaston, rendered 
famous by his researches into electricity and galvan- 
ism, and rich by his discovery of the method of 
making platinum malleable. A sense of awe again 
creeps over the visitor as he contemplates the massive 
heads which have contributed so much to the well- 
being of mankind. 

It will be seen that a visit to the halls of the Eoyal 
Society is not an expedition to be undertaken lightly, 
or in an irreverent spirit. He who seeks to be 
admitted to the sacred penetralia, where science sits 
enthroned among her chosen votaries, feels very much 
as he did on his first visit to the House of Lords, an 
institution which has much in common with the Eoyal 
Society. The would-be visitor must first look up a 
friendly F.E.S., who, if the applicant be deemed 
worthy, will introduce him either personally or bj' 
letter to the acting secretary, Mr. White, who will 
enter his name on the book, bracketed with the 
name of the introducer, and he will now only have 
to present himself at the fashionable hour of 8.30 to be 
at once admitted to the Upper House of Science. 

Having fulfilled these conditions, I presented myself 
at Burhngton House on one of those foggy evenings 
for which London is recovering its ancient notoriety. 
Having deposited my coat and hat with a careful 
attendant, I found myself in the spacious ante-room. 



24 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

gazing on the dark features of his Majesty King 
Charles II., who, albeit of an over gay and festive turn 
of mind, had probably acquired a certain dilettante 
taste for science from his dashing relative, that ring- 
leted Prince of Bohemia, who — equal to either fortune 
— led a charge of cavalry in the field, or conducted 
a scientific experiment in the quiet recesses of his 
laboratory with equal success. This same " Kupert's 
drop," the scientific toy destined to immortalize its 
inventor, affords grave matter for reflection to those 
endowed with a philosophic temperament. The heroes 
of Long Marston Moor and Naseby, dashing Cavaliers 
and sturdy Eoundheads, have long since rendered 
back to earth the strength which they drew from her 
mighty bosom. As the world whirls on their names 
will wax dim enough in the page of history, but 
'' Eupert of the Ehine " has written his name in 
indelible characters on the records of scientific 
discovery. 

The members are now dropping in one by one, and 
are chatting pleasantly in groups, or examining speci- 
mens and photographs of curious organisms brought 
by a distinguished Fellow, who is the happy possessor 
of a sun-picture of the gigantic octopus recently 
washed ashore at Newfoundland. Thoughtful-looking, 
grey-haired men are the majority of the F.E.S., but 
active withal, and evidently men to whom hard work 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 25 

and constant study have become necessary stimulants. 
For the nonce they put on a hoUday ah% as if bent on 
enjoying a little bit of scientific dissipation, and 
resolved to make a scientific night of it. But the 
clock points to half-past eight, the hom^ at which 
proceedings commence, and punctually to the moment 
the audience settle down here and there, while the 
president proceeds to take the chair. 

On a dais placed immediately beneath the portrait 
of Newton, at the upper end of the room, sits the 
president, enthroned in a massive chau*, evidently 
made " on the lines " of Sir Joseph Banks, and 
affording ample room for Dr. Hooker, whose spare 
figure and study-worn face are surmounted by a pair 
of those bushy eyebrows which so frequently add 
force and character to the features of those deeply 
learned in the law and those other sciences to which 
Mr. Ayrton recently declined to concede any priority 
over jurisprudence. Before the president lies the 
mace, without which no regular meeting can be held. 
On his right sits Professor Stokes, Lucasian Professor 
of Mathematics, the senior secretary, and on his left 
sits, or rather recUnes in his armchaii', one who has 
done much to gild the pill of science and make it 
acceptable to the many — Professor Huxley. A short 
paper is read in the absence of the contributor by the 
junior secretary, and duly committed to the archives 



26 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of the Society, after which ceremony the meaning of 
some compHcated clockwork on the table is made 
manifest. The inventor of the instrument — Professor 
Eoscoe — steps up to the table at the invitation of the 
president, and explains the machine in question, a 
clever contrivance for measuring automatically the 
strength of the actinic rays of the sun, by means of a 
roll of sensitive papers, successive portions of which 
are unwound, exposed to the light for a certain time, 
and reeled off, thus preserving a record of the inten- 
sity of the chemical rays during various periods, of 
the day. At the conclusion of the exposition, the 
president invites discussion, and the Fellows, nothing 
loth, attack the subject vigorously. The reader of 
the paper having replied to the objections brought 
forward, is formally thanked by the Society, and 
his invention duly recorded in the archives. Another 
paper is read on Explosive Compounds, the con- 
ductivity of concussion by rough and polished tubes, 
and more especially on the extraordinary power 
of water in transmitting the shock of an explosion to 
an immense distance. This subject provokes a 
lengthened and lively discussion, at the conclusion of 
which the meeting comes to an end ; the chairman 
rises, the mace is removed, and the learned Fellows 
abandon themselves to tea and scientific gossip. 



( 27 ) 



11. 

THE KOYAL INSTITUTION. 

That stronghold of fashionable science, the Eoyal 
Institution in Albemarle Street, covers a site of great 
historical interest. In 1665, when the space now 
occupied by Arlington Street was taken up by the 
gardens of Goring House, three stately villas were in 
course of erection on the opposite or north side of 
Piccadilly. Between Burlington House on the east — 
built originally by the Sir John Denham who poisoned 
his beautiful wife — and Berkeley House on the west, 
the entire space was occupied by the stately mansion 
built by Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Pepys, of course, 
went to see it while building, and has a prime bit of 
scandal: ''the common people have already called it 
Dunkirk House, from their opinion of his having a 
good bribe for the selling of that town." John Evelyn 
— a partial critic, inasmuch as he had had a hand in 
its internal adornment as well as in laying out the 



28 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

gardens — declared that he had *' never seen a nobler 
pile " than that occupied by Lord Clarendon until his 
flight after he had been deprived of the great seal. It 
was a short-lived palace. The Chancellor dying in 
exile, the Earl, his successor, sold ''that which cost 
^50,000 building to the young Duke of Albemarle for 
^25,000, and ultimately this stately pal^e," says 
Evelyn, was ''decreed to ruin, to support the pro- 
digious waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his 
estate since the old man died." He sold it to the 
highest bidder, and it fell to "certain rich bankers and 
mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it 
^£35,000 ; they design a new town, as it were, and a 
most magnificent piazza. 'Tis said they have already 
materials towards it, with what they sold of the 
house, alone more worth than what they paid for it. 
See the vicissitude of earthly things ! I was astonished 
at the demolition, nor less at the little army of 
labourers and artificers levelling the ground and con- 
triving great buildings, at an expense of £200,000 if 
they perfect their design." Bond Street, Dover Street, 
and Albemarle Street were the result of the venture 
of the "bankers and mechanics," who were shrewd 
enough to descry, more than two hundred years ago, 
that cities follow the sun and march westward. 

Commencing with the nineteenth centuiy, the 
Eoyal Institution can claim for itself many of the 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 29 

most remarkable discoveries which have distinguished 
an era of unrivalled activity. It owes its origin 
partly to Sir Joseph Banks, but in a far greater degree 
to a more remarkable man. Benjamin Thompson, 
afterwards Count Eumford, was a lineal descendant 
of one James Thompson, who figured at Charlestown 
in Winthrop's company in 1630. Born in his grand- 
father's farmhouse, he enjoyed the advantage of a 
good grammar-school education, and then advanced 
in the world by the steps familiar to this day in 
America, but almost unknown in Europe. He was 
apprenticed to an importer of British goods, was 
allowed to make small ventures on his own account, 
fancied that he had invented perpetual motion, took a 
great interest in questions relating to light, heat, and 
the wind, lost his place, and blew himself up with 
fireworks before the age of sixteen. At seventeen he 
was a dry-goods clerk in Boston, studied French 
during his evenings, and got himself an electrical 
machine with money earned by cutting and carting 
firewood. He then boarded for some eighteen months 
with a Dr. John Hay, and picked up a little anatomy, 
chemistry, surgery, and physic, and in 1771 went to 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend Winthroj)'s 
lectm-es on Experimental Philosophy. He then, after 
the manner of his country, ''taught school" at Wil- 
mington ; and afterwards became master of a school 



30 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

at a place originally called Kumford, but afterwards 
re-cliristened Concord, when the disputes as to the 
State to which it belonged were finally settled, and it 
was ceded to New Hampshire for good and all. 

Shortly before attaining the age of twenty, Thomp- 
son, a fine, handsome young man, married — or, to 
use his own expression — ''was married by" Mrs. 
Eolfe, a wealthy widow of Concord. There was now 
no more occasion to " teach school," and Thompson 
hoped for leisure to pursue science vigorously; but 
the American Eevolution breaking out, he speedily 
found his way to England, in 1778 was elected a 
Fellow of the Eoyal Society, and two years later 
became an Under Secretary of State, and Colonel of 
the King's American Dragoons. At the conclusion of 
the war he was knighted by George the Third, and, 
having met the Elector of Bavaria at Strasbourg, 
passed a considerable time in Munich, busying him- 
self in improving the breed of cattle and in building 
workhouses, and it was in order to find the most 
economical method of lighting the workhouse in 
Munich that he initiated the series of experiments 
afterwards embodied in a paper on "The Eelative 
Intensities of the Light emitted by Luminous Bodies," 
read before the Eoyal Society. 

Honours now fell thicldy upon the successful 
American. In 1785 he was elected member of the 



THE EOYAL INSTITUTION. 31 

Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and in the two 
succeeding years was made a member of the Berlin 
Academy of Sciences and received the order of St. 
Stanislaus. Finally, Sir Benjamin Thompson became 
Lieutenant-General of the Bavarian Armies, received 
the order of the White Eagle, and was made a Count 
of the Holy Eoman Empire. 

After the death of his wife he travelled for sixteen 
months in Italy, and during his stay at Verona rebuilt 
the kitchens of the two great hospitals — La Pieta and 
La Misericordia. Seven-eighths of the firewood were 
saved, and his success in this enterprise appears to 
have greatly encouraged Count Kumford to pursue his 
investigations into the proper management of fuel. A 
curious essay written by him about this time contains 
the mixed philanthropic and philosophic germ of the 
Eoyal Institution. This is a " proposal for forming 
in London, by private subscription, an establishment 
for feeding the poor and giving them useful employ- 
ment, and also for furnishing food at a cheap rate to 
others who may stand in need of such assistance, con- 
nected with an institution for introducing and bringing 
forward into general use new inventions and improve- 
ments, particularly such as relate to the management 
of heat and 'the saving of fuel, and to various other 
mechanical contrivances by which domestic comfort 
and economy may be promoted." This was followed 



32 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

by other essays on '' Food and Feeding the Poor," 
on '^ Eumford Soup and Soup Kitchens," and on 
"Chimney Fireplaces." The Eumford medal was 
now presented to the Eoyal Society " for discoveries 
tending to improve the theories of fire, of heat, of 
light, and of colours, and to new inventions and con- 
trivances by which the generation and preservation 
and management of heat and of light may be pre- 
served." The endowment of the medal consisted of 
dBlOOO stock, and was, I may add, presented on the 
first award, in 1802, to its founder. Meanwhile 
Eumford went to Ireland and fitted up laundries and 
model kitchens, cottage fireplaces, and model lime- 
kilns ; served in Bavaria, preserving by his firmness 
and skill the neutrality of that country ; and finally 
determined to return to America, but was deterred 
from carrying out this project by his anxiety to launch 
the Eoyal Institution. In the mind of Eumford the 
dominant idea was originally that of bettering the 
condition and increasing the comforts of the poor. A 
society was formed for this purpose, and out of it 
sprang, from a proposal of Count Eumford, a scheme 
for forming a new "Establishment in London for 
Diffusing the Knowledge of Useful Mechanical Im- 
provements." The two great objects of the institution 
were declared to be the diffusion of the knowledge 
aforesaid, and the teaching of the application of 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 33 

scientific discoveries to the improvement of arts and 
manufactures in this country. To fulfil the first object 
were to be exhibited full-sized working models of fire- 
places, kitchens, stoves, grates, boilers, coppers, &c., 
and smaller models of houses, bridges, spinning-wheels, 
and of all " such other machinery and useful instru- 
ments as the managers of the institution shall deem 
worthy of the public notice." 

In order to carry into effect the second object of this 
institution — namely, '^ teaching the application of 
science to the useful purposes of life" — a lecture-room 
was to be fitted up " for philosophical lectures and 
experiments, and a complete laboratory and philo- 
sophical apparatus, with the necessary instruments, 
will be provided for making chemical and other 
philoso]3hical experiments." On the 7th March, 1779, 
a meeting was held at the house of Sir Joseph Banks, 
at which the list of original fifty-four proprietors and 
subscribers of fifty guineas was read. In addition to 
the names of Eumford and Banks are found on this 
list those of Angerstein, Joseph Grote, the Duke of 
Devonshire, Earl Spencer, Earl Holland, Lord 
Palmerston, the Earl of Winchelsea, and William 
Wilberforce. By the end of June, 1801, the Eoyal 
Institution had received upwards of twenty thousand 
pounds in subscriptions. The site of four houses had 
been purchased in Albemarle Street, professors of 



84 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

chemistry, physics, and mechanics had been engaged, 
daily lectures were delivered, a spacious chemical 
laboratory had been erected, workshops for making 
models had been built, and skilled workmen engaged 
for making apparatus and models of various kinds. 
Early in this year Count Eumford wrote to his 
daughter that the Eoyal Institution was " not only the 
fashion but the rage," and mentions incidentally that 
*' we have found a nice, able man for this place as 
lecturer — Humphry Davy." This " nice, able man " 
was the eminent philosopher destined to explode a 
great part of Eumford's scheme, his models, his fire- 
places, his kitchens, his experimental cooking, and 
his experimental dinners. In 1802 Count Eumford 
forsook England for Bavaria — as it turned out, for 
ever — and, like many other benefactors of his species, 
was considered a good riddance. So far as can be 
ascertained, the American-Bavarian Count was offen- 
sively dictatorial in his manner, and exasperated those 
whom he did not succeed in crushing. Having 
shaken off Dr. Garnett, the first professor of chemistry 
at the Eoyal Institution, he engaged Davy as an 
assistant lecturer in chemistry, director of the labora- 
tory, and assistant editor of the journals of the 
Institution. The future president of the Eoyal Society 
was granted a room in the house, coals, candles, and 
a salary of 100 guineas per annum. 



THE EOYAL INSTITUTION. 35 

The first interview of Davy with Count Eumford 
was not very agreeable to the young chemist, then in 
his twenty-third year. The intensely juvenile air of 
the candidate, his almost provincial manners,' and a 
slight Cornwall accent, sufficed to reduce the glacial 
Count to a lower temperature than usual. With con- 
siderable difficulty Davy obtained permission to give 
a few lectures on the properties of gases. This, 
however, was sufficient. At the first lecture the 
variety and ingenious combination of his ideas, and 
the fire, vivacity, clearness, and novelty with which 
they were expounded, enchanted the few who came to 
listen to the young lecturer, in whom they found 
united the power of poetry, oratory, and philosophy. 
The second lecture was crowded, and his course was 
obliged to be removed to the large amphitheatre, 
whither his fervid genius, and in some degree his 
youth and good looks, drew immense audiences. The 
ladies were charmed by the handsome young lecturer, 
and never tired of praising the beauty of his eyes, 
which they declared were " made for something 
besides poring over crucibles." 

Before coming to the Eoyal Institution, Davy had 
already attained a certain celebrity by discovering the 
anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, and the period 
of his professorship was signalized by many brilhant 
discoveries. Named titular professor of chemistry 



36 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

in 1802, lie only resigned the chair in 1813. He 
delivered his last lecture on the 9th April, 1812, the 
day after he was knighted by the Prince Eegent, and 
the day before his marriage with Mrs. Apreece, a 
wedding which put him in possession of a large fortune. 
The splendour shed upon the Eoyal Institution by the 
new professor of chemistry prevented the exhibition of 
any regret at the entire alteration of the original plan 
of the establishment. The Institution was no longer 
a popular school of technical science, but became 
almost the exclusive property of the higher classes. 
Ladies of the highest rank, and young noblemen, 
assiduously followed the lectures of Davy, while his 
researches in the laboratory produced the most solid 
results. It was there that he discovered the laws of 
electro-chemical decomposition, and succeeded in 
decomposing fixed alkalis — that he established the 
true nature of chlorine and the philosophy of flame. 
The electric battery with which the separation of 
potassium and sodium was operated is still preserved 
in the Eoyal Institution along with other apparatus 
used by Davy. The delight of the investigator, on 
seeing the globules of the new metal start through the 
crust of potash and catch fire on contact with the air, 
was intense. '' He could not contain his joy, and 
danced round the room in an ecstatic transport ; it 
was only after a while that he recovered sufficient 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 37 

calmness to continue the experiment." An immense 
electric battery was now constructed, and this heavy 
artillery directed against resisting earths. The result 
of experiment was to add four new metals to the list — 
barium, strontium, calcium, and magnesium. On 
resigning the chair of chemistry, Davy declared that 
he only renounced teaching in order to devote himself 
to original investigation, but after this date his life 
was only marked by one great discovery — that of the 
safety-lamp which bears his name. 

In the year marked by the rising of that brilliant 
star. Sir Humphry Davy, the directors of the Eoyal 
Institution made another great success by appointing 
to the chair of natural philosophy a man of tran- 
scendant genius, the celebrated Dr. Young. He was 
one of the few infant prodigies who have made a 
mark in after-life. At two years of age he could read. 
At four he could recite by heart numerous English 
and Latin poems, of which last, by the way, he did 
not then understand a word ; but by the age of four- 
teen he had learned — besides Greek and Latin — 
French, Italian, Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic. His 
passion for learning was immense, and his talent 
for overcoming difficulties astounding. On reaching 
man's estate he was an accomplished linguist, a 
brilliant mathematician, a botanist, a skilful musician, 
a neat turner, and a daring circus rider. This uni- 



38 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

versal genius did not remain long at the Eoyal Insti- 
tution, but yet had time to deliver a notable course 
of lectures on Natural Philosophy before his retire- 
ment, when his place was occupied by Dalton. The 
famous author of the Atomic Theory was surprised, 
like other people, at the youthful appearance of Davy, 
and writes, characteristically enough: — " He is a very 
agreeable and very intelligent young man, and we 
have extremely interesting conversations of an even- 
ing ; his principal defect — as a philosopher — is that 
he does not smoke." 

Although in the foremost rank of scientific men, 
Dalton was far from achieving great success as a 
lecturer, being almost utterly devoid of the fluency and 
power of illustration possessed in such a remarkable 
degree by Davy and Faraday. A most amusing ac- 
count was given by Babbage of the incidents attending 
the presentation of Dalton at Court. Firstly, he was 
a Quaker, and would not wear the sword, which is an 
indispensable appendage of ordinary Court dress. 
Secondly, the robe of a Doctor of Civil Law was 
known to be objectionable on account of its colour — 
scarlet — one forbidden to Quakers. Luckily, it was 
recollected that Dalton was afflicted with the peculiar 
colour-blindness which bears his name, and that, as 
the cherries and the leaves of a cherry-tree were to 
him of the same colour, the scarlet gown would 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 39 

present to liim no extraordinary appearance. So 
perfect, indeed, was the colour-blindness, that this 
most modest and simple of men, whose only pleasures 
were a pipe and a game of bowls, after having 
received the doctor's gown at Oxford, actually wore 
it for several days in happy unconsciousness of the 
effect he produced in the streets. The inventor of the 
calculating machine, having offered to present his 
Quaker friend, was evidently in a state of fussy 
excitement about the result of the experiment. Poor 
Dalton was compelled to rehearse thoroughly the 
ceremony of presentation by the inexorable calculator, 
who — having found the chances in favour of a faux- 
pas to preponderate — was in a dreadful " taking " on 
the eventful day. The calculator was completely 
wrong. The King addressed a few remarks to Dalton, 
who replied in fitting terms, and the tribulation of 
Babbage was over. 

While the claims of science were amply supplied by 
the genius of Dalton, Young, and Davy, literature and 
moral philosophy were entrusted to no ordinary 
hands. During the years 1804-5-6, the town-talk 
of London was divided between Young Eoscius, the 
youthful tragedian, and the lectures on moral philo- 
sophy delivered by the Kev. Sydney Smith, who, 
forty years after, said, *' I did not know a word about 
moral philosophy, but wanted two himdred pounds 



40 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

to furnish my house. My success was prodigious." 
The "loudest wit I e'er was deafened with" probably 
exaggerated his ignorance of his subject, as he had 
passed five years at Edinburgh, and had opportunities 
of hearing Dugald Stuart and Thomas Bromi ; but 
in any case the lectures were a certain success in 
the hands of the eloquent preacher, who, if himself 
knowing little about moral philosophy, addressed an 
audience which knew nothing at all. Of very different 
calibre were the lectures on poetry delivered by Cole- 
ridge. It will be recollected that it was in these 
famous discourses that the author of " Christabel " 
promulgated those views which have since spread 
far and wide, and will probably hold their ground 
when the ephemeral opponents of Shakspeare, and 
worshippers of a second-rate poet like Schiller, have 
for long ages been consigned to oblivion. 

On the retirement of Davy, in 1813, William Thomas 
Brand, a distinguished chemist and Copley medallist, 
was nominated to the chair, which he so admirably 
filled for forty years. Meanwhile, a young man whose 
achievements were destined to invest the Eoyal Insti- 
tution with peculiar glory had, in a manner of speak- 
ing, received the mantle of Davy. Michael Faraday 
was born at Newington Butts, of poor parents. His 
father was a farrier, of whom — to the great sorrow of 
Professor Tyndall — his son could never call to mind a 



THE KOYAL INSTITUTION. 41 

single trait of intelligence. The boy was apprenticed 
to a bookbinder, but in his leisure moments leamt " a 
little chemistry and other parts of philosophy." He 
had so far advanced as to construct for himself an 
electrical machine, when his master happened to show 
this specimen of ingenuity to one of his clients, Mr. 
Dance, who obtained permission for the apprentice 
bookbinder to be present at the four last lectures of 
Davy. The youth listened attentively, and made such 
notes that he was enabled to write a report of the 
lectm^es, which he sent to Davy, with a modest request 
that he might be employed in the laboratory of the 
Institution. Davy was struck by the clearness and 
exactitude of the young bookbinder, and gave him, at 
the commencement of 1813, the post of laboratory 
assistant. Towards the end of the year he accom- 
panied Davy abroad, as his assistant and secretary. 
Eeturning to London in 1815, he recommenced his 
duties in the laboratory of the Institution, was 
appointed Director of the Laboratory in 1825, and 
two years later became one of the regular professors 
of the Institution, where his scientific researches, like 
those of Davy, were made at the cost of the Society 
alone, without any assistance on the part of the 
State. 

The creed of this great philosopher, who had the 
glory of holding aloft among the nations the scientific 



42 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

name of England for a period of forty years, is thus 
clearly and briefly expressed : — " I have long held an 
opinion, almost amountmg to conviction, in common, 
I believe, with many other lovers of natural know- 
ledge, that the various forms under which the forces 
of matter are made manifest have one common origin 
— in other words, are so directly related and mutually 
dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into 
one another, and possess equivalents of power in their 
action." This is what Professor Tyndall, in his eloge 
of '* Faraday as a Discoverer," proclaims as the jewel 
contained in the famous paper " On the Magnetization 
of Light, and the Illumination of the Lines of Mag- 
netic Force." The same eloquent expositor does 
ample justice to the prophetic element in Faraday's 
intellect : — *' Faraday was more than a philosopher, 
and often wrought by an inspiration to be understood 
by sympathy alone. The prophetic element in his 
character occasionally coloured, and even injured (?) 
the utterance of the man of science ; but, subtracting 
that element — though you might have conferred on 
him intellectual symmetry — you would have destroyed 
his motive force." 

Among the many achievements of Faraday are the 
demonstration of the condensibility of many gases 
and his investigations into the reciprocal relations of 
heat, Hght, magnetism, and electricity. Not the least 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 43 

noble quality of this remarkable man was his marked 
preference of a purely scientific career over the 
acquirement of wealth. With the reputation acquired 
by the year 1832, he might have made several 
thousands a year by ordinary professional work, but 
considering all the time not actually devoted to 
experiment or to demonstration as a sacrifice of 
original investigation, Faraday lived and died poor 
in the world's goods. 

At the present day the Eoyal Institution maintains 
its renown — thanks to Professor Tyndall, who, by his 
work on "Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion," has 
proved himself no unworthy successor of Davy and 
Faraday. The late President, Sir Henry Holland, 
clarum et venerahile nomen, was, on his decease, 
replaced by the Duke of Northumberland, whose keen 
interest in scientific inquiry is well known. The im- 
portant office of Treasurer and Honorary Secretary — 
on which to a great extent the success of the Institution 
depends — is now ably filled by Mr. W. Spottiswoode. 

The Eoyal Institution, in addition to the attractions 
of its lectures, possesses a model-room, a newspaper- 
room, a reading-room, and a library of 36,000 
volumes, presided over by Mr. Benjamin Vincent. 

As might be expected in a highly-fashionable insti- 
tution, membership is not acquired at a cheap rate, 
but candidates who are proposed by four members are 



44 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

immediately admitted to the privileges of the Institu- 
tion, and pay on election ten guineas (five guineas as 
an admission fee and five guineas as the first annual 
payment). This payment secures admission to all 
lectures delivered in the Institution, to the libraries, 
and to the weekly evening meetings, with certain 
other privileges — such as the right of admitting two 
friends to the Friday evening meetings — a privilege 
often abused on occasions when a lion of unusual 
magnitude is about to roar. An inferior kind of 
member is the annual subscriber, who enjoys most of 
the privileges above named, with the exception of 
admission to the weekly meetings, from which sublime 
gatherings he is excluded. Other persons are suffered 
to subscribe to the afternoon lectures at the very 
moderate price of two guineas for all courses of 
lectures from Christmas to Midsummer, but are not 
allowed to show themselves elsewhere than in the 
lecture theatre, and never there on a Friday night. 

This weekly meeting is a wonderful combination of 
science and society, of physics and fashion, albeit once 
in a while a printer or photogra^iher manages to 
obtain permission to dilate on the excellence of his 
wares, and to thus advertise himself. Nevertheless, 
in spite of an occasional drawback of this kind, the 
Friday evening lectures are of sufficiently high class 
to please aU but a purely scientific audience. It is 



THE BOYAL INSTITUTION. 45 

clear that to gratify the members — who are, after all, 
mere flesh and blood, and not philosophical abstrac- 
tions — concessions to pojDular taste and feeling must 
occasionally be made. Thus, while all may equally 
enjoy a lecture on the Acoustic Transparency and 
Opacity of the Atmosphere — a subject which, in its 
practical relation to fog- signals, is full of general 
interest — those of a higher and drier turn of mind 
experience ineffable delight when Professor Sylvester 
holds forth on the conversion of circular into parallel 
motion ; while the noble army of simple lion-hunters 
rush not only to hear, but to see. Sir Samuel Baker. 
On this particular night I find all the approaches to 
Albemarle Street blocked by carriages, and on making 
my way into the Eoyal Institution find the theatre 
fully occupied at a quarter-past eight o'clock, or three 
quarters of an hour before the time of the lecture. 
With the exception of a few seats reserved for the 
two boards of Managers and Visitors, the hall is 
crowded to the ceiling, every avenue being already 
jammed with a dense mass of people, among whom 
gay opera cloaks and Angot caps largely predominate 
over black coats and snowy shirt-fronts. A few young 
men are visible, but after standing about for a while 
and finding it impossible to approach their far 
friend, these youths vanish through the crowded 
doorway and are seen no more, thus leaving the 



46 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

entire field clear to the British matron, who prevails 
to-night to an extent that would have struck terror 
into the soul of poor Nathaniel Hawthorne. There 
is no inconsiderable amount of crowding and pushing 
in this elegant throng, and I am forcibly reminded of 
the saying of a certain philosopher — who has seen 
men and cities, and the customs of them — that '' a 
well-dressed crowd is a rude crowd." 

So thoroughly and completely packed is every 
bench, step, and doorway, that it occurs to me as a 
piece of singular luck that no formidable philosophic 
apparatus is necessary for a dissertation on the Slave 
Trade of the White Nile, as the space often occupied 
by Professor TyndalFs tubs is packed full of chairs, 
to the great relief of a number of ladies. Sir Samuel 
Baker delivers his views on the Slave Trade to an 
evidently sympathetic audience, easily put into good 
humour by being told that England was the first 
na;tion to set the world the noble example of liberating 
her slaves — a statement, by the way, not precisely 
accurate, inasmuch as in 1780 was passed an Act for 
the gradual extinction of slavery in Pennsylvania, an 
example followed four years later by the States of New 
Jersey and Connecticut, and in 1793 the French 
abolished slavery in Hayti, forty years before its 
abolition in our West Indian Colonies. No doubt to 
those who had never heard much about slavery the 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 47 

remarks on its cruelty and injustice were interesting 
enough, but I, infelix, have had my ears too often 
pierced by shrill American voices, raised to shrieking 
pitch on this subject, during " the late trouble." Sir 
Samuel Baker is an excellent advocate for a new 
crusade against slavery, and produces ample evidence 
as to the atmosphere of general rascality evolved by 
slave-holding and slave-dealing, but his arguments, 
though true enough, are not very new. The lectm^er, 
however, possesses the excellent gift of carrying his 
audience along with him, and sends them home happy 
in the conviction that they have assisted at an anti- 
slavery demonstration. 

The claims of science are amply vindicated on the 
following Friday by Dr. Wright, an experimentalist of 
known boldness, who delivers a discourse on the 
*' Chemical Changes Accompanying the Smelting of 
Iron in the Blast-Furnace." Dr. Wright has enjoyed 
the advantage of pursuing his investigations in concert 
with Mr. Lowthian Bell, a gentleman well known by 
his inquiries into the chemistry of the blast-furnace, 
as well as by his office as President of the Iron and 
Steel Institute, and his gigantic enterprises in the 
production of iron and chemicals. Although of little 
interest to the general public, this lecture commands 
a good attendance of experts, who follow Dr. Wright 
very attentively through his exposition, and endure, 



48 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

without a murmur, an atmosphere heavily charged 
with noxious gases. 

I have already observed that, in addition to the 
Friday evening meetings, where lions of the first 
magnitude roar by turns, several courses of afternoon 
lectures, in which actual teaching is combined with 
attractive experiments, are given during the session. 
These lectm^ers and their subjects attract audiences 
of varying strength. Looking in, one afternoon, to 
hear a lecture on Palaeontology by Professor Duncan, 
I find the theatre but thinly attended, in spite of the 
interesting character of the lecture and its eloquent 
treatment by the expositor. This apathy may perhaps 
be explained by the difficulty of inspiring ordinary 
human beings with a taste for science, pure and 
simple ; as I well recollect that when — at the dawn 
of the Darwinian system — palseontological lectures 
were unavoidably associated with the controversy 
initiated by that philosopher, every lecture directly or 
indirectly bearing on the theory of Development 
commanded a numerous and fashionable audience. 
Attentive listeners sought, in the discourses of Pro- 
fessor Owen, for facts and deductions more or less 
damaging to the , bold theory advanced in the now 
famous " Origin of Species by Natural Selection." 
But the uproar occasioned by the " Essays and 
Eeviews," and Mr. Frederic Harrison's review of the 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 49 

reviewers in the '' Westminster," has nearly subsided, 
and the polemical element has faded out of geological 
discussion. Denuded of its controversial spice, palaeon- 
tology no longer possesses its whilom attractiveness, 
and the audience of to-day is apparently composed of 
those who care for the subject for its own sake alone. 
Professor Duncan is discoursing on that friend of my 
youth, the ichthyosaurus, and in a few neat and 
graphic sentences describes the manners, customs, 
and peculiar structure of the great fish-lizard, with 
whale -like body, crocodile head, and monstrous 
saucer-eyes. The plesiosaur with the outline described 
by the late Professor Buckland as that of a *' turtle 
with a serpent pulled through it " next engages atten- 
tion, and is described very graphically as a *' long- 
shore-man" of the diluvial period, a prowler on the 
edges of the great deep, and a snapper-up of uncon- 
sidered trifles. Plesiosaurus disposed of, the inevitable 
pterodactyle turns up, the flying lizard of predatory 
habits, the possible progenitor of birds, and the certain 
original of the heraldic dragon and griffin. The shape 
of the head and the gradual adoption by this gruesome 
creature of a breast-bone give still more coherence 
to the theory that pterodactyle is a lizard which is 
rapidly making up his mind to become a bird. These 
particulars, and a dissertation on coral islands, make 
up the body of an interesting lecture, which fails, 

E 



50 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

however, to warm the audience into enthusiasm. 
Perhaps people don't care for coral islands, or may- 
hap, to parody a line of Mr. Bret Harte — '' the ptero- 
dactyWs played out." 

On another raw afternoon, about three p.m., I 
betake myself to Albemarle Street, and become the 
s]3ectator of a widely different scene. The theatre is 
akeady full of eager visitors and thirsters after science, 
when elucidated by those brilliant experiments which 
excite the admiration and envy of Professor Tyndall's 
imitators — I had almost written rivals, forgetting that 
in this country, and in his own particular line of 
physical demonstration. Dr. John Tyndall, F.R.S., 
philosopher and cragsman, has no rival. At a three 
o'clock lecture many ladies are, of course, present, in 
all the variety of gorgeous array at present in fashion, 
for however severe may be the mental attributes of 
these fair students of physical science, no sternness is 
ever visible in their outward appearance. Pending 
the arrival of the professor of natural philosophy, 
these young ladies are chatting pleasantly among 
themselves. Are they talking science, I wonder, or 
discussing the merits of the Leonardo da Vinci hat, 
or the grace and style communicated by the Nor- 
wegian waistbelt, with all sorts of turnip watches and 
other quaint odds and ends dangling from it ? Do 
they know much about liquids and gases, or have 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 51 

they come to learn ? Verily, I know not. The well- 
known lecture table is covered with apparatus, and a 
huge bath tub occupies a considerable space. Mr. 
Cottrell, the laboratory assistant, is very busy, till, 
punctual to the stroke of three, a tall slender man, of 
undeniably Scottish aspect, steps to his place behind 
the lecture table, and a murmur of applause proclaims 
the satisfaction of the audience at the arrival of the 
successor of Faraday. The lecture, interesting in 
itself, is rendered doubly so by numerous and beautiful 
experiments, which succeed with infallible certainty. 
Perhaps the listeners to Professor Tyndall are accus- 
tomed to see his experiments '^ come off" in this way, 
but the traveller in search of science often sees experi- 
ments — chemical, physical, and others — break down 
with provoking perversity. No approach to anything 
like failure occurs to-day, and the aj^plause is great on 
the light- carrying power of water being demonstrated 
by an experiment of singular beauty. The prescribed 
hour ap23ears unnaturally short when the clock strikes, 
the lecture is closed by a short sentence, and, amid a 
mighty rustling of silks, the audience i^repares to 
depart. For a few minutes a talkative crowd blocks 
up the wide staircase and hall, and a sort of scramble 
takes place for the carriages of which Albemarle Street 
is full. Fashion takes its departure, and, having laid 
in science enough to last for a week, leaves the pro- 



52 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

fessor to enjoy himself in liis admirably- appointed 
laboratory. 

As I wend my way homewards I reflect on the large 
amomit of good solid work that has been done in the 
laboratories of the Eoyal Institution during the last 
seventy years, and on the effect produced by the dis- 
semination of scientific knowledge among the upper 
classes. As a firm believer in the doctrine that all 
revolutions in taste must take their incejption above 
and gradually percolate through the several strata of 
society, I keenly sympathize with the efforts of the 
Eoyal Institution towards inoculating the grand monde 
with a love for scientific investigation. Following the 
example of the sun — which first illumines the moun- 
tain tops, and later in the day penetrates into the 
deeper valleys — knowledge, striking first on the upper 
social regions, gradually descends, until all sorts and 
conditions of men are irradiated by its peaceful light. 



( 53 ) 



III. 

THE SOCIETY OF AETS. 

Like its younger sister in Albemarle Street, the 
Society of Arts is a notable instance of that drifting 
faculty which exercises so great an influence on all 
human institutions. Launched with widely-differing 
objects on the stream of events, these societies have 
in a certain measure displaced each other. The Eoyal 
Institution, now devoted to literature, and in a greater 
degree to pure science, was originally founded to 
promote those objects which have been fostered by the 
elder society, which, drifting away from Akt in its 
highest sense, has taken in hand industrial art, and 
applied science. One single comparison will demon- 
strate my meaning. In the beginning of the century 
— under the auspices of Count Kumford — the Koyal 
Institution undertook to improve the dwellings of the 
working classes, to warm and ventilate workhouses, 
hospitals, and cottages, and to exhibit and patronize 



54 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

improvements in the economical consumption of fuel 
and the teaching of culinary science. In the present 
year the Society of Arts, founded originally to 
encourage young artists, has offered premiums for 
the best kinds of culinary and domestic warming 
apparatus, and has directly fostered attempts to 
instruct the people of England in the best methods of 
preparing food. 

The Society of Arts has now existed for a hundred and 
twenty years, and owes its foundation to Mr. William 
Shipley, a landscape painter, who, from a " well- 
grounded persuasion of the extensive utility of the art 
of drawing to this nation, erected the Academy in the 
Strand, opposite to Exeter Change." By the efforts 
of this gentleman a meeting was held in 1754 at 
Kawthmell's coffee-house, to consider the propriety of 
establishing a Society for the Encouragement of Arts, 
Manufactures, and Commerce. 

It was resolved to bestow premiums on a certain 
number of boys and girls, and an advertisement was 
issued accordingly. The industrial element, however, 
was not lost sight of, as while a number of drawing 
prizes were advertised, premiums were offered for 
the discovery of cobalt in England, the growth of 
madder, and the manufacture of buff leather. The 
primary object was the encouragement of art, but the 
view taken of the " polite arts " was a sufficiently 



THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 55 

wide one, inasmuch as the premiums offered under 
this head were ultimately grouped under 196 classes. 
Many prizes were awarded for drawing, and among 
the recipients was Bichard Cosway, who afterwards 
became a Eoyal Academician, and a portrait painter 
of repute. It was soon found necessary to confine the 
objects of study to certain models, and as no public 
museum or National Gallery then existed, individual 
collections, such as that formed by the Duke of Eich- 
mond, were selected for study. 

On the consolidation of the Society the artists of 
London applied for permission to hold an exhibition 
in the Society's rooms. This permission was granted, 
and exhibitions continued to be held for several years. 
This annual inspection of the works of rival artists, 
who formed themselves into separate bodies, excited 
emulation, directed public attention towards their 
works, and ultimately secured for them the royal 
patronage and protection. These first exhibitions of 
pictures by native artists in the rooms of the Society . 
of Arts may, therefore, be regarded as the origin of 
that exhibition of the Eoyal Academy which now 
forms one of the great events of the London season. 

While the encouragement of art — pure and simple 
— thus formed the main object of the Society, investi- 
gation was directed towards many practical subjects 
related to the central idea. Endeavours were made 



56 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

to improve the materials employed by artists, and 
much attention was devoted to the various engraving 
processes as they gradually came into vogue. Wood 
engraving, aquatint, and mezzotint, were the subject 
of anxious care, as were improvements in pigments, 
oils, and varnishes. 

Bronze casting and chasing, iron castings, and 
artistic metal work, were also encouraged, and at a 
later date, when Alois Senefelder, an actor of Munich, 
discovered lithography, the new art was first intro- 
duced to this country under the auspices of the Society 
of Arts. Steel engraving was also first taken seriously 
in hand by Mr. Charles Warren, chairman of the Fine 
Arts Committee, who, at the suggestion of Mr. Gill, 
chairman of the Mechanics Committee, adopted a new 
method of treating steel plates. Previously to this, 
many attempts had been made to engrave on steel. 
Albert Diirer is said to have etched on steel, and 
there are four plates etched by this artist, impressions 
of which exist in the British Museum, and which in 
all books of art are recorded as having been executed 
on steel. In the attempts to revive this art, pieces 
of saw-blades were selected as the most promising 
material, but these efforts were attended with very 
little success. A Mr. Eaimbach then endeavoured to 
engrave on blocks of steel, but without achieving any 
material advance. Mr. Gill now drew the attention 



THE SOCIETY OF AETS. 57 

of Mr. Warren to the method employed at Birming- 
ham in the manufacture of ornamental snuffers and 
other articles of cast steel. The process employed at 
Birmingham was *' to subject the steel, after having 
been rolled into sheets, to the process of decarboniza- 
tion, by means of which it is converted to a very pure 
soft iron, being then made into the required instru- 
ment or other article. The ornamental work is 
engraved or impressed on the soft metallic surface, 
which, by cementation with proper materials, is 
again converted suj)erficially into steel. Mr. Warren 
modified this process, and obtained thin plates of 
steel capable of being acted upon by acids and cut 
with the graver, without destroying the cutting edge 
of the tool — as was the case with the saw-blades. 
The resulting plate yielded a greatly increased 
number of impressions." When brought to perfec- 
tion, steel plates were found equal to the production 
of ten or twelve times the number of impressions 
yielded by copper plates. Capital was invested in the 
production of works of a high class, with the effect of 
spreading far and wide through the country myriads 
of prints calculated to elevate and improve the taste 
of the people. This process of conversion and recon- 
version of steel was soon afterwards applied by Perkins 
to the production of steel rollers. These were first 
softened and then pressed into the engraved surface of 



58 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

a hardened steel block, and having acquired a design 
in relief were themselves hardened in their turn, and 
by being applied to softened steel plates produced 
almost indefinite multiplication of the original en- 
graved plate. For commercial purposes this inven- 
tion proved of immense value in the production of 
bank notes, receipts, and postage stamps. 

To ignore the exertions of the Society of Arts in the 
direction of agriculture, and especially arboriculture, 
would be to omit an important page in its history. 
The introduction of new varieties of grasses and roots 
was sedulously encouraged, while drill ploughs, the 
drainage of land, root slicers, chaff cutters, scarifiers, 
reaping machines, threshing machines, and means of 
harvesting hay and corn in wet seasons, were all 
subjects of premiums. Big things and little things 
came in for their share of attention. In the early 
days of the Society sheep were marked with tar, to 
the great loss of wool-growers. The Society sought 
strenuously to modify and improve the mode of 
marking sheep, and meanwhile instituted a crusade 
against that bold invader, the Norway rat, who had 
recently overrun the country. 

The preservation of timber was an object of earnest 
solicitude. In this age, when coal has effectually 
displaced wood as a heat producer, and iron has been 
successfully applied to the construction of houses and 



THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 59 

ships, it is difficult to realize the anxiety of our fore- 
fathers at seeing whole forests destroyed for smelting 
purposes. For a long time past the work of destruction 
had been going on, when the Society of Arts stepped 
in to advocate the planting of trees on a large scale. 
The production of oak was a special object of the 
Society's attention, the planting of acorns was carried 
on to a very large extent, and gold medals for raising 
that description of timber were awarded to many 
noblemen and gentlemen, among whom were the Earl 
of Wilton, the Marquis of Tichfield, Mr. Morse, Mr. 
Curwen, and others. The cultivation of the ash — for 
which the Bishop of Llandaff received a gold medal — 
of the Scotch fir and larch, and of fruit trees generally, 
received active encouragement. Under the auspices 
of the Society millions of trees were planted, to the 
enrichment and adornment of many previously barren 
slopes. It is worthy of remark that to a neglect of 
these precautions is assigned an actual change of the 
climatic conditions of parts of Italy, and that the 
reduction of the Arno to an insignificant stream is 
ascribed to the reckless denudation of the mountains 
among which that historic river takes its rise. 
Travellers in Switzerland also have not failed to 
observe in the side valleys many relics of ancient 
mines, deserted, at last, because all the wood within 
carrying distance had been recklessly destroyed 



60 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

without any attempt being made to replace it by 
planting. 

Considerable effort was devoted to encouraging the 
introduction and culture of spices into the British 
possessions. The cinnamon tree was introduced into 
Jamaica ; the nutmeg plant into St. Vincent ; the 
clove tree into Trinidad; the mango and the bread- 
fruit tree were also planted in the West Indies. 
Attention was also directed towards such imports as 
were capable of discovery, manufacture, and culture 
at home. 

Cobalt was discovered in Cornwall ; buff leather 
and its manufacture improved ; copper and brass 
vessels were tinned ; and hemp, flax, and madder were 
cultivated for the use of our manufacturers. " Saw- 
mills were built ; our fish supply improved ; and the 
curing of fish encouraged. Upon the fish trade alone 
the Society expended many thousands of pounds, and 
succeeded in establishing a regular supply to the 
London markets." 

During the greater part of its career the Society 
thus addressed itself to the task of fostering the useful 
arts. One condition, however, was, in the early days 
of the Society, rigidly insisted upon. The inventor 
who sought to obtain recognition of his discovery was 
obliged to forego the idea of patenting his work. What 
was given to the world by the assistance of the Society 



THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 61 

of Arts, was to be given freely and openly for the 
benefit of all. Although this principle would find 
many and eloquent advocates at the present day, a 
period intervened during which it was found necessary 
to make concessions to patentees. The introduction 
of steam as a motive power led to a sudden and 
immense development of mechanical ingenuity, and 
swelled the prospective reward of a successful inventor 
to such large proportions that it was no longer 
probable that men would work for honour and glory 
alone. Eventually patentees were permitted to read 
papers before the Society of Arts, which, dmdng the 
greater part of a century, continued to take an active 
interest in advancing the interests of science, and in 
affording aid and countenance to the other societies 
of less catholic tendencies, which sprang rapidly into 
existence. As has been already pointed out, the Koyal 
Academy in its youth owed much to the Society of 
Arts ; and it is worthy of note that, not only was the 
first exliibition of the works of rival artists held in the 
Society's rooms, but the first collection of photographs 
exhibited there in 1853. The Society still maintains 
a liberal tone, and is generous enough to grant the 
use of its handsome room to many societies for the 
purpose of holding their various meetings. 

If the Society in the Adelphi merit a place of honour 
as a promoter of other societies, still more does it 



62 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

demand notice as the mother of exhibitions. Its 
exhibitional maternity was shown in this wise. In 
the year 1841 the Society of Arts, like many other 
originally active bodies, had shown signs of falling 
into decrepitude. For many of the purposes for which 
it was originally established its office had been filled 
by other institutions, which, being less expansive in 
their views, appeared likely to act towards the mother 
society like young ducks hatched by a barn-door hen, 
and take to the stream of the future without consult- 
ing the feelings of their foster-parent. The Society 
was obviously falling into the sere and yellow leaf, 
and it was clear that something had to be done to 
rejuvenate it. A committee was appointed to revise 
the working of the Society, and that body recommended 
that a Council to manage the affairs of the Society 
should be instituted. The committee in its report 
also gave expression to the conviction " that the 
Society cannot continue to exist on the plan of j)ro- 
ceeding which is at present pursued," and that "the 
object of the Society is the promotion of the useful 
arts rather than the personal gratification of the 
members." It was further recommended that six 
commitees should be established, of five members 
each, and many other valuable pieces of advice were 
tendered, but nothing came of all this for the time 
being. At length, however, measures were taken for 



THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 63 

obtaining a Eoyal Charter of Incorporation, finally 
granted in 1847, and in the mean time it was proposed 
that an Exhibition of English Industry, analogous to 
those held abroad, should be instituted. The first 
action taken in this direction was an offer of special 
prizes for articles of manufacture, and a special fund 
was obtained for this purpose by private subscription. 
It was deemed necessary to stimulate the makers of 
English pottery to efforts towards an artistic com- 
bination of form and colour. A committee of artists 
was appointed to adjudge the prize for a tea-service, 
and this was awarded to a set designed by " Felix 
Summerly," and manufactured by Messrs. Minton. 
The identity of '* Felix Summerly" was then disclosed, 
and the Society's silver medal was presented to Mr. 
Henry Cole (who has since received the Companion- 
ship of the Bath), on the 12th of June, 1846. From 
this date a notable change came over the constitution 
of the Society. Yearly exhibitions were held. It is 
true that these were of a sectional character, and only 
proposed to illustrate certain branches of English 
industry; but it is not the less true that they were 
the immediate precursors of the Great Exhibition of 
1851. Prizes for modern industrial art were offered, 
and were eagerly competed for. Manufactures and 
artistic productions were got together at great ex- 
penditm-e of cash and industry, with the effect of 



64 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

rapidly increasing the number of members. In 1847, 
the members of the Society numbered scarce five 
hundred ; but within three years these numbers had 
tripled. But, in 1849, there were " croakers " in the 
camp. Not a few of the ruling spirits were inclined 
to '' look back from the plough." As an instance 
of this may be quoted a recommendation of the 
Finance Committee of 1849, that " the exhibitions be 
discontinued," and another, passed in December of 
the same year, that "it is expedient to reconsider the 
policy of an Art Manufacture Exhibition in the year 
1850." But the advanced spirits of the Society were 
not to be baulked. Against the council of the ancients 
a formidable opposition was organized. Mr. Cole 
resigned his seat on the Council, and, biding his time 
till the general meeting, effected a noteworthy cou]^ 
d'etat. On election day the reactionary party were 
ousted by an immense majority, and an entirely new 
Council elected. The Exhibition of Ancient and 
Mediaeval Art was duly held, and resulted in a splendid 
success, and a complete revolution of the financial 
condition of the association. In 1850 the debts of the 
Society amounted to ^2402, an amount that was 
reduced in 1851 to 5S1696, since when the Society has 
become not only solvent, but possessed of a large 
accumulation of capital, which — in the opinion of 
many of the members, now amounting to over 3000 — 



THE SOCIETY OF AKTS. 65 

it is somewhat chary in dispensing. This great storm, 
which completely altered the condition of the Society 
of Arts, and culminated in the Great Exhibition of 
1851, can thus be distinctly traced to Mr. Felix 
Summerly's ^' tea-cup." 

The merit of initiating the idea of an International 
Exhibition has been often warmly contested, but there 
is no longer any doubt that the original proposition 
was made to the Committee of the Society of Arts in 
1844, by Sir William Eothergill Cooke. There is no 
question that the idea of this gentleman was clearly 
that of an International Exhibition, at that time 
declined by the Committee of the Society of Arts, 
but at a later period adopted by that body with the 
sanction and co-operation of the late Prince Consort. 

In the month of June, 1849, the secretary, Mr. J. 
Scott Eussell, stated at the annual meeting, in the 
presence of the late Prince Consort, that, owing to the 
yearly increasing success of the Society's Exhibition, 
the Council had no doubt of their being able to carry 
out the plan originally proposed for holding a great 
national exhibition of the products of British industry 
in 1851. This statement led to frequent communica- 
tions between His Eoyal Highness the president, and 
various members, with the ultimate result of expand- 
ing the plan to international dimensions. The Prince 
Consort, as president of the Society, brought the 



DO SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

scheme officially under the notice of the Government ; 
but in the mean while the Society of Arts was not 
idle, and had already entered into a contract for 
building a convenient edifice, when a royal commission 
was issued. Mr. Scott Eussell and Mr.— now Sir — 
Stafford Northcote were appointed secretaries. An 
executive committee was formed, consisting of "Henry 
Cole, Charles Wentworth Dilke the younger, George 
Drew, Francis Fuller, and Eobert Stephenson, with 
Matthew Digby Wyatt as secretary." Meanwhile the 
Society of Arts had organized the financial arrange- 
ments necessary for carrying out the scheme, but the 
immediate connection of the Society with the Exhibi- 
tion now came to an end ; the child had outgrown its 
nurse, and required nothing short of a royal commis- 
sion to manage it. How well the Exhibition of 1851 
was managed, and how after the final adjustment 
of accounts a surplus of ^186,438 18s. 6tZ. remained 
in hand, are now matters of history, as well as the 
expenditure of that sum as part of the money 
devoted to the purchase and development of the Gore 
House estate. 

Since the launching of the Great Exhibition, the 
Society of Arts has done much good work in promoting 
industrial art and encouraging inventive genius. It is 
true that much of its work has been taken out of its 
hands by the societies and museums to which it has 



THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 67 

given rise. Among these is the PhotograjDhic Society, 
whose inception was due to the exhibition organized by 
Dr. Diamond. The South Kensington Museum itself 
may be fairly regarded as an offshoot of the Mediaeval 
Exhibition, while the Government Department of 
Science and Art is dii'ectly descended from the parent 
body. But the mission of the Society is not to repose 
on its laurels. It comes to the fore with a formidable 
list of premiums, at the head of which is a series of 
gold medals and prizes of ^50 for improved cooking and 
warming apparatus; ^6500 are devoted to this purpose, 
and have been placed at the disposal of the Society by 
a single member. A large number of prizes in money, 
and many gold and silver medals, are also offered to 
inventors. Much interest is excited at the present 
moment concerning the award of the Albert Gold 
Medal, a prize established in memory of the late 
Prince Consort, to reward " distinguished merit in 
promoting arts, manufactm-es, or commerce." This 
medal was first presented in 1864 to Sir Eowland Hill, 
K.C.B., in 1865 to the late Emperor of the French, 
and in 1866 to Faraday. Since then, this distinguish- 
ing mark of the Society's appreciation has been con- 
ferred on Wheatstone, Whitworth, Liebig, Henry Cole, 
Henry Bessemer, and has this year been awarded by 
the council to Dr. C. W. Siemens, " for his researches 
in connection with the laws of heat, and the practical 



68 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

applications of them to furnaces used in the arts ; 
and for his improvements in the manufacture of iron ; 
and generally for the services rendered by him in 
connection with economization of fuel in its various 
applications to manufactures and the arts." 

For some years the Society's examinations, con- 
ducted through local institutions about the country, 
have assisted the spread of general education, and 
now that this work is being more completely executed 
by the University local examinations, the Society has 
set on foot a scheme of technological examinations, 
which it is hoped may bear good fruit. 

The members of the Society are supplied with ample 
entertainment by the ordinary meetings, the lectm^es 
endowed by Dr. Cantor, and the meetings of the 
African, Indian, and chemical sections. For the very 
moderate sum of two guineas per annum they are 
allowed to attend meetings, to introduce two visitors, 
and moreover to receive a copy of the weekly journal 
published by the Society. Prior to 1852, no Journal 
of the Society of Arts existed, the Society being content 
with a somewhat meagre volume of Transactions. 
With the new era of prosperity the Journal was hap- 
pily inaugurated, and now supplies members of the 
Society with a complete record of the weekly proceed- 
ings, together with such admixture of general scientific 
or technical matter as may be deemed necessary by 



THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 69 

the editor, Mr. H. T. Wood. With the growth of the 
Society its organ has, of course, increased in import- 
ance, and during the last year or two, especially, has 
been considerably improved. Not the least valuable 
part of the Journal is the preservation of the discus- 
sions which generally ensue on the reading of a paper, 
and occasionally exceed in importance the paper 
itself. 

In the course of my travels I have had many 
opportunities of enjoying the discussions at John 
Street, Adelphi. Just before entering the spacious 
and handsome " great room," adorned by Barry's 
well-kno^Ti pictures, I find a notice that any gentle- 
man wishing to take part in the discussion should 
make his name known to the secretary, Mr. P. Le 
Neve Foster. This notice has always appeared to me 
as a sort of '' fiery cross," or summons to immediate 
action, calling upon me then and there to "pull my- 
self together," collect my scattered wits, and hold 
myself in readiness to jump up at the right moment 
and contradict everybody. As a rule, I succeed in 
crushing this feeling, and follow my general plan of 
retiring into myself, and waiting until called for ; but 
there are moments when my amazement at finding 
that I understand the subject overcomes my natural 
timidity, and I say, " Ha ! ha ! " among the captains. 

Inasmuch as the ordinary meetings are understood 



70 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

to be held for the exjDress ]3iirpose of ventilating new 
ideas or pet crotchets, it is only natural to suppose 
that the fun of these meetings exists in the discussion. 
To those of an unregenerate nature there is always 
something objectionable in being talked to, or talked 
at, without a chance of reply. There is no man whom 
I love and revere more than my friend the Eev. Mr. 
Chasuble. He is a good classic and a good fellow, 
generous and hearty, a good logician, and a worthy 
gentleman, whom I love everywhere but in the pulpit, 
where he has it all his own way. I admire Professor 
Stillmore immensely, and love to hear him discourse 
excellent science, except on those occasions when he 
appears behind the lecture-table as another and very 
inferior being to the real Stillmore, whom I delight to 
cultivate. Holding these heathenish views, and loving 
not to sit at the feet of any Gamaliel whatsoever, I 
enjoy myself hugely at the Society of Arts. I know 
that, so soon as the lecture is announced, somebody 
will make up his mind to come down and contradict 
all the statements advanced. No sooner does the 
victim appear at the reading-desk than I glance round 
the room, and often succeed in detecting those who 
come to argue — if not *' to scoff." These critics know 
all about the subject, whether it be Frozen Beef or a 
Channel Tunnel. They become feverish if the reader 
of the paper be slow or at all inarticulate, and they 



THE SOCIETY OF AETS. 71 

look keenly at his diagrams, meaning to make short 
work of those productions in due season. For his 
allotted space the reader is suffered to proceed without 
let or hindrance ; but no sooner has he made an end 
of his reading, than well-informed gentlemen — who 
have either been listening attentively or, as is more 
probable, been thinking over what they should say 
when he had done — spring up and proceed to demolish 
him bit by bit. After a while, a reaction sets in, 
the friends of the lecturer support him more or less 
warmly — generally less — and the battle becomes 
general all along the line. The hero of the evening 
has the right of reply, so that the much-valued privi- 
lege of the last word rests with him. 

Under these regulations, there is often much healthy 
talk, and occasionally some good "tossing and goring" 
— a quotation which reminds me that its author was 
one of the early debaters of the Adelphi, and that a 
" subject relating to mechanics " was once descanted 
upon at the Society of Arts and Manufactures, with a 
"propriety, perspicuity, and energy which excited 
general admiration," by no less a personage than Dr. 
Samuel Johnson. 



72 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



IV. 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL 
ENGINEEES. 

Whatever diverse opinions may be held as to the 
stationary or progressive nature of the moral sciences, 
and although art may be said to have actually retro- 
graded since the age of Pericles, no doubt can exist as 
to the enormous advance in wealth and comfort made 
by the civilized world during this present century — 
emphatically the century of the straight line. It is 
probable that an ancient Athenian gentleman was at 
least as weU instructed in metaphysical science as a 
modern graduate of Oxford or Edinburgh, Heidelberg 
or Halle. So far as keen artistic sense and purity of 
taste are concerned, the Greek — with eye educated by 
the constant contemplation of forms of perfect beauty 
— with ear attuned to the sounding march of Homer's 
hexameters, and with mind accustomed to dwell on 
the stern grandeur of ^schylus, the polished lines of 
Sophocles, and the more sympathetic verse of Euri- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 73 

pides — possessed an unquestionable advantage over 
the modern scholar, whose attentive i^erusal of novels 
and newspapers is hardly calculated to improve his 
oratory. If, however, it may be conceded that no 
advance has been made — nay, more, that actual 
retrogression has taken place — during the last 2500 
years in the study of words and their uses, and in the 
production of beautiful forms, it must, on the other 
hand, be admitted that the modern Englishman pos- 
sesses a knowledge of things and wields a power over 
the forces of nature undreamt of by the poets, philo- 
sophers, and grammarians who discoursed sweetly 
in the garden, or thundered out sonorous periods in 
the Agora. Most worthy of note is the marvellously 
short space of time in which the great modern 
development of human power has taken place. Albeit 
a hardy plant, science has grown with almost incon- 
ceivable rapidity. In some five or six thousand years 
man had only improved the canoe and the coracle 
into a gaUey and a sailing ship, and had shown even 
less inventive genius in the methods of terrestrial 
locomotion — indeed, so far as roads were concerned, 
England was worse off 200 years ago than during 
the period of the Eoman occupation. Something 
had been done in widening the minds of men by 
making them better acquainted with the globe that 
they inhabited. Vasco de Gama and Columbus had 



74 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

unlocked the treasures of the Eastern and Western 
World ; the mariners' compass had come into general 
use ; Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo had made 
short work of traditional cosmogonies, and those 
potent civilizers, the printing-press and gunpowder, 
had been invented. But the material condition of 
mankind had as yet received no immediate benefit 
from these discoveries. The wealth of Mexico and 
Peru, far from enriching Spain, had diverted from the 
parent country the energy of her bravest sons, and 
the loss of the Low Countries had inflicted on the State 
a loss from which she has never since recovered. 
France was occupied in the pursuit of glory; Holland, 
rich and prosperous beyond all European nations, was 
harassed with the task of Joshua — in staying the sun 
of Louis Quatorze ; while England had as yet given 
but small promise of the industrial pre-eminence she 
was destined ultimately to assume. Nevertheless 
indications were not wanting in our little island of a 
strong desire for material progess, due, according to 
some authorities, to the great awakening of the 
human mind during the period of the Eenaissance, and 
according to others to the inductive system of philo- 
sophy propoimded by Bacon. Be this as it may, an 
inquiring spirit was abroad, and investigations into 
the then hidden forces of nature — with the direct 
intention of pressing them into the service of mankind 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 75 

— occupied the miads of many eminent Englishmen. 
Bobert Boyle rendered important services to science, 
and hovered on the brink of other yet more important 
discoveries. Newton, Flamsteed, and Halley immor- 
talized themselves by their contributions to astronomy; 
but most remarkable of all were the sudden strides 
made in the arts of construction, in which the cele- 
brated Hooke greatly distinguished himself. Leuwen- 
hoeck raised the microscope to the dignity of a 
scientific instrument, under Savery the first crude 
steam-engine was brought into working order and 
employed as an ef&cient agent for raising water, and 
Newton invented the reflecting telescope. So far as 
the sudden advance in mechanical science which 
signalized the last century can be assigned to any one 
IDerson it may be ascribed to this great man, whose 
" Principia " revealed the method of applying mathe- 
matical princix^les to the forces of nature. 

All this admirable seed, destined to bear fruit an 
hundred and a thousand fold in due season, did not of 
course produce any immediate amelioration in the 
condition of the British nation. More than any other 
nation England might, as late as a hundred and fifty 
years ago, have been pronounced singularly deficient 
in public works. While Holland — and for that matter 
India and China — possessed a vast system of canals, 
the internal communications of this country were in a 



76 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

barbarous condition. Artificial harbours, canals, and 
machinery there were none, and the public roads 
across the country were for the most part little better 
than bridle paths. Over these primitive and deeply- 
rutted tracks, often impassable in wet weather, the 
few wheeled carriages in use were dragged, at a 
fearful expenditure of sinew, time, and temper. A 
county magnate, on the occasion of one of his rare 
visits to London, set his affairs in order before start- 
ing, and packing a lumbering coach with ample pro- 
vision, trusted to the strength of six or eight powerful 
Flanders horses to drag him through the tedious miles 
of mire which separated him from the metropolis, 
holding himself fortunate indeed if he escaped break- 
ing down more than half-a-dozen times on the road, 
and eluded the attentions of professional or amateur 
highwaymen. So long as the roads remained mere 
muddy tracks it was found convenient to avoid as 
much as possible the use of wheeled carriages. The 
" solitary horseman " and the ''two travellers," beloved 
of romancists, picked their way among the stones and 
quagmires which separated one great town from 
another, and the commerce of the country was mainly 
carried on by means of pack-horses. 

Owing to the difficulty and danger of transit, the 
luxuries of life were exorbitantly dear, and even those 
necessaries which did not happen to grow in the im- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEEES. 77 

mediate vicinity of the consumer were difficult of 
attainment. In the total absence of canals, inland 
navigation was both tedious and uncertain. " The 
rivers were left," as the Eastern potentate remarked, 
*' as Allah had made them ; " and therefore this 
imperfect river navigation could only be undertaken 
under favourable circumstances, i.e. when the rivers 
were sufficiently flooded. In a few rare instances 
temporary flush-weirs were used to pen up the water 
in shallow places, and in a few others side cuts with 
the pound lock were introduced, with side weirs con- 
structed with the double object of allowing the floods 
to escape and utilizmg the water-power. 

During the first quarter of the last century New- 
comen's steam-engine, having been improved by 
Potter and Beighton so as to become self-acting, was 
used for pumping water from collieries, but the con- 
sumption of fuel was so great that its application 
continued to be very limited. For driving such 
machinery as existed, and for working the few mills 
in operation, wind and water were the sole motive 
powers employed, and with the exception of the silk 
mills at Derby, introduced by Sir Thomas Lombe 
from Italy, nothing in the shape of manufacturing 
machinery was known. Metallurgy was yet in its 
infancy — charcoal being the chief medium used for 
reducing iron — sanitary precautions were unknown — 



78 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the magnificent cloaca of Eome having found no 
mediaeval successors — paving was neglected, and gas 
as yet undreamt of. 

A great change was at hand. A revolution in the 
face of England was about to be wrought by three 
remarkable men — the fathers of modern scientific 
engineering. In 1716 James Brindley was born at 
Chapel-en-le-Frith, in Derbyshire. Eight years later 
John Smeaton was born at Austhorpe, near Leeds ; 
and in 1736 James Watt saw the light at Greenock. 
If strict definition be adhered to, Watt can hardly be 
classed as a civil engineer, although he proposed a 
plan for improving the river Clyde, and suggested the 
idea of the Caledonian Canal, before devoting himself 
exclusively to the improvement of the steam-engine, 
and working out those grand discoveries which have 
immortalized his name. 

Although born later than Brindley, Smeaton was 
the first to distinguish himself — a circumstance attri- 
butable probably to the comparative ease of his circum- 
stances, and from his having no educational leeway 
to make up in manhood. Commencing with a fair 
education, and devoting himself for a short space to 
the study of the law, Smeaton soon discovered that 
the bent of his genius was in another direction, and 
being luckily not thwarted by his parents, applied his 
vigorous mind to philosophical inquiry. Starting in 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 79 

life as a mathematical instrument maker in 1750, he 
two years later attracted the notice of the scientific 
world by his air-pump, and subsequently, by several 
communications to the Eoyal Society on mechanical 
subjects, so raised himself in the estimation of that 
learned body as to obtain their gold medal, and the 
honour of being elected a Fellow of the Society. The 
celebrated paper on the natural powers of wind and 
water to turn mills and other machinery depending 
on circular motion produced directly and indirectly 
the most important results. Owners of water-power 
discovered that their power was increased one-third 
by the adoption of Smeaton's plan. Subsequent 
improvements were made on Smeaton's system for 
windmills, which by Meikle, By water, and Cubitt 
were brought — as were high-roads and mail coaches — 
to absolute perfection just as they were about to be 
thrust from the world by steam. 

Smeaton next devoted his attention to the laws 
which govern the formation and the maintenance of 
harbours, and, after inspecting the great works in 
operation in Holland, introduced many improvements 
in the draining of marsh lands. About the middle 
of the last century a perfect rage sprung up for 
public works, and, in the conduct of these, Smeaton 
never once failed. Curiously enough, his first 
important work is that with which he is most im- 



80 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

mediately identified. At the very period — 1755-59 
— when he was unknown and untried as a practical 
engineer, he was selected as the fittest person to he 
entrusted with the rehuilding of the Eddy stone Light- 
house, just destroyed by fire. By the design and 
construction of this celebrated edifice, Smeaton intro- 
duced a new era in masonry, and achieved one of the 
greatest triumphs that have ever fallen to the lot of 
an engineer. 

While Smeaton was battling with the winds and 
waves, Brindley was struggling with the difficulties of 
emerging from an agricultural to a mechanical career. 
Born of humble — but as the American humourist hath 
it, " not otherwise dishonest " — parents, Brindley 
was, almost until manhood, entirely without educa- 
tion. Drifting afterwards into the millwright's trade, 
he acquired by his mechanical skill a certain pro- 
vincial celebrity which, although not very lucrative 
in itself, yet paved the way to an engagement destined 
to immortalize Brindley and enrich his patron. An- 
terior to the career of Brindley, pound locks had 
been introduced on river navigations, and were also 
used on the Sankey Canal in 1755. This work was 
effected by making an almost entirely new channel, 
and its success gave a remarkable impetus to canal 
construction. In 1758 Brindley was called upon by 
the Duke of Bridgewater to advise on his project of 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 81 

a canal from Worsley to Manchester. Without un- 
necessary pondering or hesitation, Brindley forsook 
tradition, and, striking into a new path, placed the 
inland navigation of England far in advance of what 
had been achieved elsewhere. 

He constructed — in addition to the Bridgewater 
Canal, with its many miles of underground commu- 
nications in the Worsley coal mines, and its famous 
aqueduct at Barton — the celebrated Grand Trunk 
navigation, cutting through the mountainous back- 
bone of England by the Harecastle tunnel. In con- 
junction with Smeaton and others he estabhshed 
water communication between the distant and appa- 
rently naturally divided towns of London, Liverpool, 
Bristol, and Hull, and justly acquired the title of 
father of inland navigation. 

While Brindley and Smeaton were engaged in the 
construction of great public works, James Watt was 
giving up the best years of his life to the improve- 
ment of the steam-engine. Stated briefly, the inven- 
tions of Watt, which had the effect of bringing the 
steam-engine into general use, were as follows : the 
separate condensing vessel, with an air-pump for 
exhausting the steam cylinder, instead of injecting 
cold water into it for impelling the piston on New- 
comen's plan by atmospheric pressure. In conjunc- 
tion with Boulton, Watt brought these improvements 

G 



82 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

into operation about the year 1773, and produced a 
greater diminution in the consumption of fuel than 
Smeaton, who had rendered the system of Newcomen 
as perfect as it could be made, had already done. 
The labour of the eight succeeding years resulted in 
the invention of rotatory motion by the steam-engine, 
first by the crank, and afterwards by the sun and 
planet wheel, thus adapting it to the driving of all 
kinds of machinery. A year later, Watt invented 
the application of steam with expansion and with 
double action, alternately above and below the piston, 
and in 1784 invented the parallel motion, or working 
gear and valves and the governor. These improve- 
ments being carried into effect in the engines made 
by Boulton and Watt in 1784-85 induced their intro- 
duction to mills, whence they have succeeded in 
expelling simpler applications of natural forces. 

Concurrently with the advance made in the con- 
struction of harbours, lighthouses, canals, drainage 
works, and the steam-engine, great improvements 
were effected in the roads of the country. Food for 
melancholy reflection is supplied by the fact that 
many of the most important roads in the world have 
been made for purely military purposes — i.e., to bear 
soldiers to kill people, not corn to feed them. The 
ancient Koman roads — admirably constructed as they 
were — owed their construction to strategic purposes, 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 83 

and the famous road over the Simplon was made 
with no other object but to facilitate the pouring of 
a French army into the plains of Lombardy. For 
like reasons a certain impetus was given to road- 
making in England by the raids of the two Pre- 
tenders ; and by the direction of General Wade the 
first really good roads seen in this island since the 
decadence of the Komans were formed through the 
north of England into the Highlands. These works, 
constructed by military engineers, drew strong atten- 
tion to the wretched condition of the ordinary roads 
of the country, which, as has been previously re- 
marked, were simply worn tracks and nothing more. 
It is true that public or hackney coaches were estab- 
lished in London in 1625, but it was not until 1666 
that a coach was established which travelled between 
London and Oxford in two days. Another, called the 
" Flying Coach," was afterwards started to perform 
the journey in thirteen successive hours — or at the 
rate of four miles an hour — but this unprecedented 
feat could only be accomplished during the summer 
months. In 1712 London and Edinburgh were con- 
nected by a service of coaches, but this journey occu- 
pied thirteen days, exactly the period required by 
the Great Western to perform her first voyage from 
Bristol to New York. Improvements in the con- 
struction of roads and of coaches were gradually 



84 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

introduced, and in 1784 passengers and letters were 
conveyed from London to Edinburgh in three days 
and nights, an achievement which created the most 
extraordinary excitement. This period was next 
reduced to forty-two hours, when the ultimate effect 
of animal spirit and endurance was reached. The 
transport of goods was enormously expensive and 
tedious. It required from two to three days to 
convey a ton of merchandise from Liverpool to Man- 
chester, at a cost of forty shillings per ton, a service 
now performed in two or three hours for as many 
shillings. 

In the construction of the improved high-roads 
which covered this island during the early part of 
the present century, a prominent part was taken by 
Thomas Telford, who, in conjunction with William 
Jessop and John Eennie, composed a trio of emi- 
nent engineers — the connecting link between the . 
fathers of the craft and the generation of workers ! 
who, in our own day, have covered the globe with 
evidences of their skill. The labours of Jessop — the 
pupil, and afterwards the assistant, of Smeaton — 
reflected no discredit on his great teacher. Among 
the many great undertakings that he conducted to 
a successful conclusion may be mentioned the im- 
provements on the rivers Aire, Calder, and Trent, 
the Grand Junction Canal, the inland navigation of 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 85 

Ireland, the City ship-canal across the Isle of Dogs, 
and the conversion of that part of the river Avon 
which flows through the city of Bristol into an im- 
mense floating dock. Jessop was, moreover, the con- 
sulting engineer of the West India Dock Company 
in London, and of the Ellismere Canal Company. 
He also laid down the Surrey iron rail, or tramway, 
which, albeit a failure as a speculation, is worthy of 
note m a sketch of the progress of civil engineering 
as one of the earliest applications of this mode of 
conveyance to the purposes of public traffic. 

John Eennie — whose name looms large in the 
annals of engineering — enjoyed the advantage of 
early training under the ingenious Meikle, the in- 
ventor of the threshing machine, and worked as an 
occasional student under some of the most celebrated 
professors of the University of Edinburgh. Com- 
mencing business as a millwright, in his native 
county of Haddingtonshire, he was soon led to 
change the scene of his labours in consequence of 
an introduction to James Watt, who invited him 
to superintend the erection of the Albion flour-mills, 
where the perfected machinery of Boulton and Watt 
was to be put into operation. Quickly acquiring 
reputation as a superior mechanist, he was appointed 
about the year 1791 or 1792 to direct the execution 
of the Lancaster Canal. This and the Crinan Canal, 



86 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

which divides the Mull of Cantire from Argyleshire, 
established his reputation as a civil engineer of the 
first rank. He was associated with other great works 
— the completion of the Eau Brink cut, and the new 
Nene outfall for the drainage of the fens of Norfolk, 
Lincoln, and Cambridgeshire. He also participated 
in the construction of three of the large dock estab- 
lishments in the port of London, the Leith docks, 
and extensive additions to those of Liverpool and 
Hull. Still more stupendous operations now engaged 
his attention. Sheerness Dockyard was raised by 
him out of a quicksand 25 feet deep and 10 feet 
under low water. Pembroke was also designed by 
him, as were the breakwater in Plymouth Sound, 
the artificial harbours of Kingstown, Howth, Holy- 
head, and Donaghadee, together with three bridges 
over the Thames, and others in various parts of the 
country. 

Thomas Telford — a Dumfriesshire man — enjoyed 
none of the advantages possessed by Eennie and 
Jessop, but advanced to a high position by the sheer 
force of that pe7fervidum ingenium with which the 
inhabitants of North Britain are supposed to be 
endowed. A native of Eskdale, he received the educa- 
tion commonly given to the peasantry of that country, 
and having been apprenticed to a stonemason, worked 
diligently at his trade mitil his twenty-third year. A 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 87 

visit to Eclinburgii revealed to him a wider horizon 
than that of his native valley. Coming to London, 
and working for a time as a mason in the quadrangle 
of Somerset House — then building — he attracted 
attention by his superior intelligence, and was 
appointed to superintend the erection of a new official 
residence in Portsmouth Dockyard, and subsequently 
undertook the direction of some alterations in Shrews- 
bury Castle. In 1793 he was nominated acting 
engineer of the Ellesmere Canal. Albeit every part 
of England contains some record of Telford, his 
works were not confined to the United Kingdom ; his 
skill was employed in the construction of the great 
ship-canal of Gota, in Sweden, the last connecting 
link in the navigation from the Baltic Sea to the 
German Ocean. The Caledonian Canal, originally 
proposed by Watt, and advised on by Jessop, was 
executed by Telford. Participating in the construction 
of many other great works — notably the Gloucester 
and Berkeley ship-canal — Telford is, perhaps, after 
all, best known by the gigantic system of roads exe- 
cuted under his superintendence — the Highland, the 
Holyhead, and the Glasgow and Carlisle, whereby 
'* whole regions were brought within the pale of 
society." Besides the thousands of minor bridges 
forming part of these works, Telford constructed 
several bridges over the Severn, the Broomielaw 



0« SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

bridge over the Clyde, the bridge over the Conway, 
and, lastly, the famous structure which spanned the 
Menai Straits. Telford closed a long and glorious 
career in 1834, and found a fitting tomb in West- 
minster Abbey, having lived to see the advent of the 
iron roads that were destined to consign to disuse 
many of the finest products of his genius. 

The great development of civil engineering pro- 
duced by the labours of himself and his contempo- 
raries induced the illustrious Smeaton, so early as 
1771, to found the society since known by his name. 
At that period the Eoyal Society absorbed nearly all 
those distinguished by scientific attainments. In the 
comparative infancy of scientific knowledge this was 
natural and possible from the very catholicity of that 
illustrious body, but as the objects of philosophical 
research multiplied, and the sphere of inquiry widened, 
many offshoots from the parent stem assumed an 
independent existence. The Eoyal Astronomical 
Society was the first of these, and was followed by 
associations for promoting the study of geology, 
botany, zoology, geography, and statistics. The Smea- 
tonian Society of Civil Engineers had existed for 
nearly fifty years, when it was felt that the growing 
importance of civil engineering demanded an institu- 
tion on a larger scale. Thomas Telford (himself a 
Smeatonian) concurred in this view, and an oppor- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 89 

tunity was soon found of carrying it into effect; 
Towards the end of 1817 a few gentlemen, then begin- 
ning life, resolved to form themselves into a society 
for promoting a regular intercourse between those 
engaged in the various branches of civil engineering, 
and *' thereby mutually benefiting by the interchange 
of individual observation and experience." The first 
meeting was held at the King's Head Tavern, in 
Cheapside, on the 2nd January following, when rules 
were adopted for the government of the society, which 
continued to assemble for the next two years, when 
it was resolved "that a respectful communication be 
made to Thomas Telford, Esquire, civil engineer, to 
patronise the institution by taking upon himself the 
office of President." Telford accepted the chair with- 
out hesitation, and was formally installed on the 21st 
March following. Keceiving a new impetus from this 
important accession of strength, the institution grew 
rapidly in importance, until on the 3rd of June, 1828, 
it received a charter of incorporation under the 
Great Seal by the title of the " Institution of Civil 
Engineers." 

During the quarter of a century which elapsed 
between the formation of the Society and the occupa- 
tion of the presidential chair by Sir John Eennie in 
1846, the ci^dl engineers of the United Kingdom had 
distinguished themselves not only at home, but in 



90 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

every quarter of the globe. Steam had asserted its 
empire on land and sea. Time and space had been 
reduced to their lowest terms. Projects for traversing 
water by boats worked by mechanical means appear 
to have occupied the attention of philosophers from 
remote periods — remote, that is, from an engineering 
point of view. The propulsion of boats by wheels is 
said to date as far back as the time of the Eomans, 
and the Chinese are said to possess a boat moved by 
these means. Spain also puts in a claim on behalf 
of one Blasco de Garay, reported to have made an 
experiment in propelling vessels in the presence of the 
Emperor Charles V., at Barcelona, in 1543. Kevert- 
ing to more exact history, we find Prince Eupert 
owning a barge propelled by wheels in 1682, when it 
was proposed to build tug-boats with wheels, worked 
by horses, for towing vessels against wind and tide ; 
but the first idea of applying steam to the propulsion 
of ships appears to be due to the celebrated Papin, 
who in 1690 proposed to propel boats by racks and 
pinions, with pistons working in steam cylinders. 
This ingenious inventor had thought out this scheme 
very well, and was only deterred from putting it in 
practice by want of funds, a disease from which — at 
the period in question — the Eoyal Society, to whom 
Papin had applied, suffered severely,. In 1737, 
Jonathan Hulls published a pamphlet, wherein he 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 91 

gives a plate of a boat with a wheel attached to the 
stern, chiven by a steam-engine to propel the boat — 
tugging behind her a vessel of war. He took out a 
patent for the invention, but experienced so much 
opposition that he relinquished the project. New- 
comen's engine was proposed for propelling the wheel ; 
but the difficulty of producing rotatory motion with 
that kind of engine explains the abandonment of the 
design. Nothing more was done until 1765, when Dr. 
Eobison, of Edinburgh, proposed to James Watt to 
apply steam for propelling engines on land and sea. 
Watt, however, considered Newcomen's engine ill- 
calculated for this purpose, and devoted his entire 
energies to the perfection of his own form of engine, 
content to leave its manifold application to time. 

In 1782 the Marquis de Jouffroi tried a steamboat 
on the Saone at Lyons, but without success. About 
the year 1788 Fitch and Eamsay, of America, and 
Serrati, an Italian, are said to have made some experi- 
ments, with what success is not known ; and in the 
same year Miller, of Dalswinton, constructed a double 
boat, 60 feet long, with two paddle-wheels in the 
centre, moved by manual labour, and was convinced 
that Jpower alone was wanting to bring his idea to 
full fruition. Taylor proposed to employ steam, and 
applied to Symington, a practical engineer (who had 
previously proposed some improvements in New- 



92 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

comen's engine, with a view to propelling carriages), 
to supply him with an engine. This experiment was 
successful, so far as it went, and was followed by 
others ; but the difficulty of avoiding an infringement 
of Watt's patent, and the trouble and annoyance 
occasioned by the opposition of mankind, induced 
Miller, Taylor, and Symington to abandon their 
invention and recur to their previous avocations. 

In 1801 Lord Dundas employed Symington to con- 
struct a steamboat propelled by an engine on Watt's 
plan, '* having one cylinder placed horizontally, and 
the piston, with a stroke of four feet in length, was 
jointed at the extremity, and attached to a connecting 
rod, with a crank at one end, turning a paddle-wheel, 
]Dlaced in a well-hole at the stern of the vessel, w^hicli 
has two rudders, one on each side of the cavity in 
which the paddle-wheel was placed." This vessel was 
named the Charlotte Dundas, and answered its pur- 
pose — that of towing vessels on the Forth and Clyde 
canal — completely, but, as usual, a storm of prejudice 
had to be encountered. The proprietors of the canal 
objected to the boat, alleging that the ''wash" occa- 
sioned by the paddle-wheel would injure the banks of 
the canal. In the course of the next year the cele- 
brated Fulton, who had been for some time in England, 
went to Scotland and visited Symington, who made 
several trips up and down the canal, and fully ex- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 93 

plained every part of the boat and apparatus to Ful- 
ton, who observed that the objection of injuring the 
banks of small rivers and canals, which might apj)ly 
to England, would have no force in America, where 
things were on a larger scale. Having made notes of 
all particulars, Fulton went to France, built a steam- 
boat, tried it on the Seine in 1803, and soon after 
went to America. It is a cmious fact in the history 
of inventions that both the First Consul of the French 
Eepublic and the English people, then well acquainted 
with the use of the steam-engine, should have allowed 
this important discovery to slip through their fingers. 
Fulton, however, had no doubt of the importance 
of the invention, and pm'sued it with a tenacity 
thoroughly American. In 1805 he applied to Messrs. 
Boulton and Watt to make a steam-engine, and a^Dplied 
it to a boat built in America. This was the Clermont 
■ — the wheels and machinery were on Symington's plan, 
propelled by Watt's engine. A speed of five miles an 
hour was attained ; and from this time Fulton con- 
tinued to construct larger boats, and applied to Boulton 
and Watt for more and more powerful engines. 

These efforts in America excited much attention 
in this country. In 1812 Henry Bell, of Glasgow, 
started the Comet to ply for goods and passengers on 
the Clyde, between Glasgow and Helensburgh. This 
boat only attained the same speed as the American 



94 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Clermont — five miles an hour. From this date the 
improvement in the construction of steamboats and 
marine engines was comparatively rapid. The side- 
wheel system superseded the stern-wheel and in 1814 
Boulton and Watt first applied two engines to a small 
boat on the Clyde. In 1819-20 four steamers were 
working between Dover and Calais ; and by 1821 a 
line of steamboats was running between London and 
Leith. Meanwhile steam had been introduced into 
the Eoyal Navy, and Maudslay and Field had applied 
a valve for improving the expansive action of steam in 
the cylinder. In 1825 William Jolliffe, in conjunc- 
tion with Bessell and Hall, established the General 
Steam Navigation Company, and built two vessels of 
between five and six hundred tons burthen. These 
vessels were intended to ply between London and 
Cadiz and London and St. Petersburg, but the company 
considered the project of Jolliffe as rash, and restricted 
their operations to the British Channel and the 
German Ocean. 

In the memoir of the late Charles Wye Williams I 
find that about the year 1819 he — with the intention, 
originally, of assisting Mr. John Oldham, the engineer 
of the Bank of Ireland, and subsequently of the Bank 
of England — turned his attention to steam navigation, 
chiefly with the object of introducing Mr. Oldham's 
patent feathering paddles, which, after numerous 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 95 

modifications, became known as " Morgan's wheel." 
Mr. Williams consulted with the late Mr. A. Manby, 
of the Horseley Ironworks, and thence was produced 
a small steam-engine with two oscillating cylinders, 
the first of its kind and the precursor of all those 
which have since been so extensively used on rivers 
and at sea, by John Penn and other engineers. 
These engines, with a pair of Oldham's feathering 
paddles, were adapted to a whale-boat, at the Eing's 
End Foundry, Dublin, by Mr. Charles Manby (Hon. 
Sec. Inst. C.E.), and the success was so great as to 
lead to the formation of a steam company for the 
conveyance of passengers and goods between Liverpool 
and Dublin ; and the company built, in 1823, the 
steamers City of Dublin and Town of Liverpool, each of 
300 tons burthen. Mr. Williams was denounced as a 
bold and rash man to commence such a speculation 
with two ships. However, as it turned out, there was 
a call for more capital and ships, and four additional 
steamers were laid down, viz. the Hibernia, Britannia, 
Manchester, and Leeds. This growth of steam property 
caused the firm of Williams and Co. to merge into the 
firm of the " City of Dublin Steam Packet Company." 
At a later date Mr. Williams, in conjunction with 
Mr. Caiieton, launched the famous Peninsular and 
Oriental Steam Navigation Company. 

Eapid progress was now made in the construction 



96 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of marine engines. To obviate the inconvenience of 
the incrustation of boilers by the deposit of salt, Hall, 
of Dartford, introduced the system of surface conden- 
sation, while Maudslay and Field, in 1825, invented 
and patented their brine pumps, and Thomas Howard, 
of Eotherhithe, invented a refrigerator for pursuing 
the old system of condensation by jet. The next great 
event in the history of steam navigation was the 
crossing of the Atlantic by the Great Western, in 1838. 
This enterprise was due to the spirit of a Bristol 
company, with Brunei as their consulting engineer. 
Considerable difficulty was experienced in inducing 
engineers to attempt the construction of marine 
engines of sufficient power to drive a ship of 1240 tons 
burthen. Messrs. Maudslay and Field, however, 
undertook the work, and constructed a pair of engines 
on the side-lever principle, each of 210 horse-power, 
with cylinders 73 inches in diameter, and 7 feet 
stroke, making 15 strokes per minute. At her first 
trial on the Thames, the vessel went twelve miles per 
hour, and on the 8th April, 1838, started on her first 
voyage from Bristol, under the command of Captain 
Hosken, with seven passengers, 50 tons of goods, and 
500 tons of coals, and reached New York on Monday, 
the 23rd April, thus accomplishing a distance of 3000 
miles in thirteen days and ten hours. The success of 
this experiment, which surpassed the most sanguine 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 97 

expectations of its promoters, opened the eyes of the 
world to the possible extension of ocean steam navi- 
gation. The famous Cunard line from Liverpool to 
Boston was designed for carrying the mails, and 
started with four fast vessels of about 1000 tons and 
450 horse-power each. This was followed by the 
Eoyal Mail Company, for carrying the mails between 
England and the West Indies, starting with twelve 
vessels of somewhat similar dimensions. The radical 
defect of these early steamships was the enormous 
weight of the engines, and the great space requu-ed by 
them, which rendered it difficult for them to carry any 
great amount of cargo beyond the passengers. This 
serious inconvenience led to the devotion of much 
ingenuity to the improvement of marine engines. 
Messrs. Seawards were the first to introduce engines 
wherein side levers were dispensed with, and the 
power applied directly from the piston to turn the 
paddle-wheel shaft. This system was modified by 
Miller, who was very successful in obtaining high 
rates of speed, and the long-standing objection of extra 
friction was got rid of by adopting the vibrating 
cylinders described in Trevithick and Vivian's patent 
in 1802, patented by Witty in 1813, and by Manby in 
1821, by whom the first engines of this kind were con- 
structed. Other improvements were adopted, and 
again improved upon by Maudslay and Field, Spiller, 



98 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Penn and Barnes, Miller, Seaward, Napier, Manbj, 
Fairbairn, Hall, Eennie, and many other able men 
who turned their attention to the extension and 
improvement of steam navigation. 

Just as the paddle-wheel was about to demonstrate 
its power to contend with the Atlantic waves, a rival 
propeller — destined ultimately to supersede it for 
ocean-going ships — sprang into existence. It was said 
by the late Sir John Eennie that " the first idea of 
stern-propelling was very probably suggested by the 
movement of fishes, whose chief propelling power 
exists in the tail, as also from the common and ancient 
practice of sculling a boat from the stern." 

Be this as it may, rude notions of a screw propeller 
had long floated in ingenious minds. Shorter, Napier, 
Tredgold, and Brown tried and described the action of 
propellers of various shapes applied to different parts 
of a vessel. Cameron, Woodcroft, Lowe, Ericson, and 
others, patented screw-propellers ; but nothing of 
positive value was effected until the year 1836, when 
the late Sir Francis Pettit Smith — since affectionately 
known as " Screw " Smith — obtained a patent for the 
appKcation of a screw to propel vessels by placing it 
in that part of the stern of the vessel called the "dead 
wood." He accordingly built a small vessel thirty- 
four feet long, and made experiments with her on the 
Thames. With this little boat he achieved a speed 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 99 

of seven or eight miles an hour, and then tried her 
in a seaway. The Ship PropelHng Company was 
now formed, and, under the direction of Smith, 
the Archimedes was designed by Pascoe, built at 
London by Whimshurst, and fitted with engines and 
machinery by Kennie. At first the propeller consisted 
of a single-threaded screw; but this not answering 
very well, another screw was soon adopted with two 
threads opj)Osite to each other. The Archimedes was 
a success. She obtained a great velocity through the 
water, and proved herself an admirable sea-boat. 

The success of the screw propeller was now de- 
monstrated, and although vessels constructed on this 
system failed for awhile to accomplish the speed 
attained by those driven by the paddle-wheel, their 
superior power in a rough sea — since demonstrated 
beyond all possible question — induced the construction 
of the Rattler. Subsequently to this the Fairy, a 
Eoyal yacht, displayed the power of the screw in 
producing speed — this little boat of 260 tons burthen 
achieving 15| miles per hour through the water. 

Coincident with these improvements in the 
machinery of navigation, a new material was intro- 
duced for the construction of vessels. Hitherto birch 
bark, bull-hide, and wood had been the chief materials 
employed in making ships, but in 1820-21 Aaron 
Manby constructed, at Horseley, near Bu-mingham, 



100 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

a wrought-iron boat of 120 feet length and 18 feet 
beam. This vessel, propelled by Oldham's feathering 
paddle-wheels, was built for the pm^pose of plying on 
the river Seine, and was navigated across the Channel 
by the late Sir Charles Napier. This boat continued 
to ply between Paris and Havre for many years, and 
although for a while superseded by other and more 
powerful boats, survived to wear out her engines, and, 
being fitted with new ones, held her own on the Seine 
for a long period. Notwithstanding the success of the 
Aaron Manhy, the art of iron shipbuilding developed 
slowly, and it was not until the fifth decade of the 
present century that ironships came into general use, 
since when it has been decided to build steamships of 
no other material. 

"While these great demands were being made upon 
the iron industry of the country, an important modifi- 
cation was introduced into the method of smelting 
iron. The low furnaces of the Middle Ages had long 
since been superseded by the blast-furnace, and coke 
had supplemented charcoal in the important work of 
reducing iron ore. Powerful blowing engines had 
been used, but hitherto they had been employed 
simply in forcing through the tuyeres atmospheric air 
at its ordinary temperature. In the first volume 
of the " Transactions of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers " is a noteworthy paper communicated by 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 101 

J. B. Neilson on the hot-air blast. In 1836 this 
gentleman writes to the president — "About seven 
years ago an ironworker, well known in this neigh- 
bourhood, asked me if I thought it possible to purify 
the air blown into blast-furnaces, in a manner similar 
to that in which carbureted hydrogen gas is purified; 
and from this gentleman's conversation I perceived 
that he imagined the presence of sulphur in the air 
to be the cause of blast-furnaces working irregularly, 
and making bad iron in the summer months. Subse- 
quently to this conversation, which had in some 
measure directed my thoughts to the subject of blast- 
furnaces, I received information that one of the 
Muirkirk iron furnaces, situated at a considerable 
distance from the engine, did not work so well as the 
others ; which led me to conjecture that the friction of 
the air, in passing along the pipe, prevented an equal 
volume of the air getting to the distant furnace as to 
the one which is situated close by the engine. I at 
once came to the conclusion that by heating the air at 
the distant furnace I should increase its volume in the 
ratio of the known law, that air and gases expand as 
448 + temperature. In prosecuting the experiment 
which this idea suggested, circumstances, however, 
became apparent to me which induced the belief on 
my part that heating the air introduced for supporting 
combustion into air-furnaces materially increased its 



102 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

efficiency in this respect." The hot-blast came 
immediately into operation, and Mr. Neilson supple- 
mented his paper by some remarks which now read 
curiously enough. 

"Were the hot-blast generally adopted, the saving to 
the country in the article of coal would be immense. 
In Britain about 700,000 tons of iron are made 
annually, of which 50,000 tons only are produced in 
Scotland ; on these 50,000 tons my invention would 
save in the process of manufacture 200,000 tons of 
coal annually. In England the saving would be in 
proportion to the strength and quality of the coal, and 
cannot be computed at less than 1,520,000 tons 
annually, and taking the price of coals at the low rate 
of four shill'mgs per ton a yearly saving of a9296,000 
sterling would be effected." 

It was indeed high time that a saving in the pro- 
duction of iron was effected, for a revolution was at 
hand, destined to transfer the carrying trade of the 
country from Brindley's canals and the magnificent 
highways designed by Telford to the iron roads now 
accepted as the ordinary means of transit. 

The history of great discoveries reveals two salient 
peculiarities. First is the cmious fact that at certain 
epochs the world becomes, as it were, ripe for the 
reception of great truths. From its four corners 
civilization addresses itself to the task of supplying 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 103 

the recently discovered want. Inventors of various 
nationalities advance by different roads and distinct 
means towards the great object in view. Investigators 
working in entire independence of each other arrive 
almost simultaneously at the same conclusion. 

It would seem as if the human mind underwent 
periodical upheavings, and that outcrops of the same 
stratum of thought occurred in different localities. 
Instances without number may be cited — among 
others, those of Hooke and Newton, touching the law 
of the inverse square, of Watt, Cavendish, and La- 
voisier, on the composition of air and water, and of 
Adams and Leverrier in the discovery of the planet 
Neptune. It is by no means clear who invented gun- 
powder, and the merit of first printing by movable 
types is hotly disputed. The history of chemistr}^ 
abounds with illustrations of the law of simultaneous 
discovery. Without citing well-worn cases, I may 
quote a triple one. About twelve years ago the 
isomerism among the alcohols was simultaneously 
discovered in three separate countries by three inde- 
pendent sets of investigators in quest of entirely 
distinct objects : in Germany by Kolbe, in England 
by Wankljm and Erlenmeyer, and in Paris by Wurtz 
and Friedel. 

The second peculiarity is that no sooner is one class 
of mechanism brought to perfection than it is super- 



104 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

seded by a fresh application of forces. Wind and 
water mills were no sooner perfected and fitted with 
the admirable mechanism invented by Smeaton, Ark- 
wright, and Hargreaves, than Watt introduced steam 
as the great motive power. Archery had just attained 
its most perfect development when gunpowder was 
discovered. The arts of attack and defence of fortified 
places have seen many mutations. Fortresses hitherto 
deemed impregnable were reduced by line and rule on 
the method of trenches introduced by the Turks and 
improved by Vauban, and a siege was deemed a mere 
matter of time when the experience of Silistria, Kars, 
and Sevastopol proved that plain earthworks could 
hold their own when revetements of solid masonry 
must infallibly have given way. The art of building 
and manoeuvring sailing ships had been reduced to a 
science, in the case of the famous yacht America, just 
as steam was superseding sailing ships altogether. 
Postal service had achieved perfection when the elec- 
tric telegraph was invented, and roads and coaches 
had been brought to the highest pitch of efficiency at 
the very moment when railways were to revolutionize 
the face of the world. But however the merit of 
England in great inventions may be shared by other 
countries, this latter is unquestionably and indispu- 
tably her own. 
About the commencement of the present century a 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 105 

wild, eccentric man, named Trevithick — who had 
acquired some celebrity in the West of England as a 
mining engineer — succeeded in producing locomotive 
engines. In conjunction with Vivian and Blenkinsop 
he proposed ribbed wheels, with nails or bosses for 
the purpose of enabling the engine to ascend steep 
inclines. Previously to this date, rails or tramways 
had been made at various collieries throughout the 
kingdom, and flanges had come into almost common 
use. Dr. Eobison, James Watt, his assistant Mur- 
doch, and other inventors had calculated the pos- 
sibilities of introducing locomotives on common 
roads, but the high-pressure engine was by the best 
authorities considered unsafe. Undeterred by these 
considerations, Trevithick and Vivian constructed a 
locomotive engine for the Merthyr Tydvil Eailway. 
Working by adhesion alone, this engine, which " con- 
sisted of one high-pressure cylinder, with a fly-wheel 
and four bearing wheels — two of which were turned 
by the action of the piston — produced a velocity of 
five miles per hour dragging a load of fifteen tons." 
Unluckily for Trevithick, one of his engines exploded, 
and an accident which would have been deemed a 
mere trifle at the present day, and the costs whereof 
would have been calmly carried to the profit and loss 
account, sufficed — at the barbarous period referred to 
— to arrest the career of inventive genius for a time ; 



106 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

but in 1811 Blenkinsop took out a patent " for using 
rails having teeth like a rack in them, into which 
wheels having corresponding teeth were worked by 
the engine, thus securing the engine against slipping." 
This departure from the principle of adhesion was 
ignored by Blackett, who in 1813 resumed Trevithick's 
original plan, and " constructed an engine which 
worked by adhesion alone upon the rails at the 
Wylam Colliery at Newcastle." At this hour a man 
was prepared to crystallize by the power of his genins 
these crude efforts into a practical shape. 

A keen, honest Northumbrian — the worthy father 
of a more worthy son — had advanced by this date to 
the position of engine-wright to Killingworth Colliery. 
Engaged during his leisure hours in superintending 
the education of his son, and in helping him to make 
a sun-dial by the aid of Ferguson's " Astronomy," 
George Stephenson bent his main energies towards 
the construction of a locomotive. This extraordinary 
man, who reached the age of eighteen without being 
able to read or write, had, in the following fourteen 
years, not only contrived to pull together a fair 
''scratch education," but had so greatly distinguished 
himself by his successful treatment of an obstinate 
Newcomen pumping-engine as to have acquired the 
sobriquet of the " engine doctor." Continually making 
improvements in locomotives, Stephenson took out 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 107 

patents, in conjunction with Dodd in 1815, and with 
Losh in 1816, and their productions were found equal, 
in 1820, to drawing coal trains at the rate of seven or 
eight miles per hour over the cast-iron edge rails 
recently introduced and patented by Birkenshaw. 

The Hetton and the Stockton and Darlington Rail- 
ways made by Stephenson were opened about 1825, 
and contained all the recent improvements in flanged 
wheels and wrought-iron rails. The first locomotive 
which ran on the Stockton and Darlington Eailway 
is, I believe, still preserved as a valuable relic, and 
regarded with much veneration by the natives of 
Darlington. James had already foreseen the develop- 
ment of the locomotive, and in 1815 published a letter, 
proposing railways as a regular mode of communica- 
tion ; but it was not till the Liverpool and Manchester 
Eailway Company obtained their first Act in 1826 — 
leaving the tractive power to be employed an open 
question — that the locomotive excited general public 
attention. The company employed Messrs. "Walker and 
Eastrick to report on the northern railways, and these 
gentlemen favom-ed the employment of stationary 
engines, while Stephenson and Eennie strongly advo- 
cated the introduction of the locomotive. Under these 
circumstances, the company offered a reward of five 
hundred guineas for the best locomotive engine. The 
result of the trial of the competing engines in 1829 



108 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

electrified the world. The " Kocket," made by the 
Stephensons, attained the undreamt-of speed of 
twenty-five miles an hour, and decided the tractive 
question at once ; and the Liverpool and Manchester 
was opened in 1830, Mr. Huskisson proving the first 
victim to the iron-horse. Interesting in itself, and 
deeply valuable for the lessons conveyed by it, is the 
record of the fanatical opposition brought to bear 
against the new system. That powerful and gloomy 
giant known as Vested Interest arose in his might, 
and contested the ground inch by inch. Landowners 
rose in arms against Stephenson and his works, and 
professional engineers denounced him as a quack, and 
his scheme as the most absurd '' that ever entered 
into the head of man to conceive." Innumerable 
objections, practical and sentimental, were advanced. 
The railways would cut up the country, deform the 
face of Nature, burn up the crops, and throw entire 
districts out of cultivation. Cattle would be frightened 
to death, pheasants smoked out, the noble and im- 
portant pursuit of fox-hunting interfered with, and the 
country generally would, to use the time-honoured 
sentence, "go to the devil." How far these profound 
vaticinations have been realized, the present state of 
England and English industry can testify. 

Conscious of the disadvantage of a defective educa- 
tion, George Stephenson determined that his successor 



THE INSTITUTION OF CmL ENGINEERS. 109 

should suffer from no such drawback, and made the 
training of his son the object of his earnest solicitude. 
No narrative can be more touching than that of the 
studious evenings passed by father and son together 
after the labours of the day. A severe course of study 
prepared the young man to render his father most 
valuable assistance not only in the great railway con- 
troversy, but in the actual construction of the famous 
locomotive which established their reputation. 

Taking with his father a prominent part in the 
construction of the English railway system, Eobert 
Stephenson did not confine himself entirely to the 
ordinary work of a railway engineer. As a builder 
of stupendous bridges on a new and original plan, he 
acquired a high rank. The tubular bridge across the 
St. Lawrence at Montreal, and the Britannia Bridge, 
across the Menai Straits, remain as enduring monu- 
ments to his splendid genius. In 1855 he was 
elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 
a post which he filled with such ability as to reflect 
honour both upon himself and the distinguished body 
over which he presided. A most endearing trait in 
his character was his loving admiration for his great 
parent. In the course of his presidential address he 
said : '' It is my great pride to remember that what- 
ever may have been done, and however extensive may 
have been my own connection with railway develop- 



110 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

ment, all I know, and all I have done, are primarily 
due to the parent whose memory I cherish and 
revere." 

Another remarkable instance of the hereditary 
transmission of engineering genius occurred in the 
case of the Brunels. Sir Mark Isambard Brunei made 
his mark in several branches of engineering science, 
notably in the invention of the celebrated block 
machinery, and in the general introduction of bands 
of thin hoop-iron between courses of brickwork — an 
important improvement which has been extensively 
used ever since — but his name is more particularly 
identified with the Thames Tunnel — a stupendous 
work previously proposed and commenced by Tre- 
vithick, but subsequently abandoned. The difficulties 
encountered in the construction of this tunnel were of 
a nature to test to the utmost the perseverance and 
ingenuity of the constructor. By the invention of 
the famous shield, Brunei exhibited his fertility of 
resource, and by the completion of a work, then unique 
in its character, placed his name for ever on the roll 
of illustrious engineers. 

During this great development of engineering 
genius the Institution of Civil Engineers had waxed 
mighty in the land. The institution was uniformly 
fortunate in the choice of its officials, but in the early 
days of its existence, under the presidency of Telford 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEEKS. Ill 

and the secretaryship of James Jones — to whom much 
of the credit of organizing the society is due — the 
finances failed to exhibit a prosperous aspect. The 
usual struggle for existence occurred. Many secre- 
taries were appointed, among whom is found the name 
of Captain (afterwards Colonel) Stoddart — one of the 
Central Asian pioneers, who at Bokhara suffered the 
fate often imposed upon travellers by barbarous 
nations. 

The name of Arthur Aikin — one of the founders of 
the Geological Society, the originator of the idea of 
the Zoological Gardens, the first president of the 
Chemical Society, and the famous secretary of the 
Society of Arts — also figures as honorary secretary to 
the Institution of Civil Engineers. After the death of 
Telford — who was interred in "Westminster Abbey — 
James Walker was called to the presidential chair in 
1835, and it was under the presidency of this cele- 
brated engineer that the constitution of the society 
underwent a revolution, brought about mainly by the 
exertions of Mr. Charles (now Colonel) Manby. Mr. 
Thomas Webster (now Q.C.) held the appointment of 
secretary from 1836 to 1839, but on being nominated 
assistant to Judge Maule he asked his friend Mr. 
Manby to undertake his secretarial duties for a time. 
In 1839 Mr. Manby was appointed to the position, 
and at once put his shoulder to the wheel. In secur- 



112 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

ing the services of this gentleman as secretary, the 
Institution was singularly fortunate, inasmuch as he 
not only possessed the true organizing faculty neces- 
sary to restore to the Institution its lost vitality, but 
was so happily situated as to be enabled to give a 
large portion of time to his labour of love. Under 
his care the society speedily gained strength, and has 
since asserted its existence with undiminished vigour. 
Fourteen years ago. Colonel Manby, whose exertions 
in the formation of an Engineer and Eailway Volunteer 
Staff Corps have recently been gracefully acknowledged 
by the Indian Government, and whose works — many 
of which were undertaken in conjunction with the 
lamented John Kobinson M^Clean — have met with 
ample recognition by foreign Governments, relin- 
quished the post of acting secretary for the honorary 
dignity, since which date the duties of secretaryship 
have been admirably fulfilled by Mr. James Forrest, 
to whose courtesy I am indebted for much of the 
material of this sketch. 

One of the principal changes brought about by 
Colonel Manby was the alteration of the term of 
presidentship. Feeling that the occupation of the 
chair for a long term of years by one individual, 
however distinguished, was prejudicial to the true 
interests of the society, he succeeded in inducing 
Mr. James Walker to resign the presidency in 1845, 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEEES. 113 

since which date the presidents have been elected 
annually, although it is a custom of the Institution to 
confer on its chief officer the honour of one re-election. 

Since this important alteration in the constitution 
of the Society, only one president — Sir John Eennie — 
who sat from 1845 to 1848, has occupied the chair for 
more than two years. 

Without any design to expand the present sketch 
beyond its proper limits, I find it difficult to pass over 
without special notice the names of the distinguished 
men who have filled the presidential chair of the 
Institution of Civil Engineers. In 1846 Sir John 
Rennie, on his elevation to the dignity of president, 
delivered that remarkable address to which I, in 
common with all subsequent writers on engineering, 
am largely indebted for many important and interest- 
ing particulars. In the course of this admirable 
specimen of comprehensive arrangement and lacid 
exposition, the president alluded to the railway work 
already done, and ^' the mania for new lines, which 
has exceeded all former precedent. 1901 miles have 
been already executed on the narrow gauge, 2^4 on 
the broad gauge ; 614 miles are in progress of con- 
struction, and projects for 20,687 miles were actually 
introduced into Parliament last session, representing 
a capital of £350,000,000. Of these projects Acts of 
Parliament have been passed for 3573 miles, requiring 

I 



114 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

a capital of £129,229,767." Only twenty-eight years 
have passed since these words were spoken, and the 
United Kingdom now hoasts over 15,000 miles of rail- 
way, representing a capital of £600,000,000 sterling. 

Sir John Kennie was succeeded by a man whose 
innate genius for mechanics had been developed by a 
course of severe training, and brought into prominence 
by a fortunate incident of which he took full advan- 
tage. After working under Sir Samuel Bentham at 
Portsmouth, young Joshua Field was brought up to 
the Admiralty at Whitehall to assist in the drawing 
department. At this period Mr. (afterwards Sir 
Isambard) Brunei was engaged on the famous block 
machinery then in process of construction by Maudslay . 
The latter gentleman requiring some assistance in 
drawing, applied to Sir Samuel Bentham to recommend 
him a competent draughtsman, when Sir Samuel and 
Mr. Goodrich strongly recommended young Field, who 
acquitted himself so well as to induce a permanent 
connection with Mr. Maudslay, whose partner he 
subsequently became. The famous house of Maudslay 
and Field has left its mark on the history of 
mechanical engineering. Besides occupying the first 
rank in the construction of marine engines, the house 
distinguished itself by its saw machinery, corn-mills, 
and mint machinery, and more especially by the 
construction of the first shield used in making the 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 115 

Thames Tunnel. To Mr. Field, in conjunction with 
Mr. Henry Eobinson Palmer, Mr. William Nicholson 
Maudslay, Mr. James Jones, Mr. Charles Collinge, 
and Mr. James Ashwell, belongs the honour of found- 
ing the Institution of Civil Engineers. 

During the presidentships of Eennie and Field raged 
the ''battle of the gauges." On either side of this 
great question were ranged the engineering giants of 
the day. The broad gauge — already adopted on the 
Great Western Kailway — was w^armly advocated by 
the younger Brunei, an engineer of brilliant and 
daring genius, who, albeit his conceptions rarely 
produced pecuniary success, yet acquired well-merited 
renown by the grandeur of his inspirations, and left 
behind him the reputation of one whose splendid 
failures were perhaps more instructive, and possibly 
more valuable, to mankind than the positive achieve- 
ments of successful mediocrity. In the forefront of 
the opposing battalion stood the younger Stephenson, 
whose well-balanced intellect discerned at once the 
importance of carr^dng out great undertakings at a 
cost which should not entail ruin upon shareholders 
in order to enhance the reputation of the engineer. 
The result of this great conflict is now a matter of 
history, and the inclination now shown — wherever 
fresh ground is opened — to reduce the gauge to far 
narrower limits than 4 feet 8^ inches, demonstrates 



116 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the solidity of judgment displayed by the great North- 
umbrian. 

In 1850 Sir William Cubitt became president of 
the Institution. The career of this great engineer 
is one among many instances of gradual development. 
A miller's son with a taste for construction commenced 
by repairing the machinery of the mill, was subse- 
quently apprenticed to a joiner, and tried to make a 
machine for splitting hides. This, although a failure, 
showed so much ingenuity, that the young man was 
taken into partnership by an agricultural machine 
maker. After inventing the self-regulating windmill 
sails, Cubitt commenced the construction of machines 
for draining marshes, and ultimately achieved extra- 
ordinary success in drainage works, canal making, 
and the construction of docks at Cardiff and Middles- 
borough. Turning his attention to railways, he — as 
engineer-in-chief — constructed the South-E astern 
Eailway, " where he adopted the bold scheme of 
employing a monster charge of 18,000 lb. of gun- 
powder for blowing down the face of the Bound Down 
Cliff, between Folkestone and Dover, and then con- 
structing the line of railway along the beach, with a 
tunnel beneath the Shakespeare Cliff." To the ear of 
the malefactor the name of Cubitt had an awful 
sound, as that of the inventor of the treadmill. 

The chair was now successively filled by two 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 117 

hydraulic engineers of the highest rank. James 
Meadows Eendel, after acquiring considerable reputa- 
tion by his success in bridge building, devoted his 
attention more particularly to the construction of 
harbours and docks. Among his achievements may 
be enumerated the Birkenhead Docks, the new docks 
at Grimsby, and the Great Western Docks at Plymouth. 
Here he first introduced the method of construction 
since employed with so much success at the great 
harbours of Holyhead and Portland. In each of these 
great works many natural obstacles were overcome. 
At Grimsby the works were projected far out upon the 
mud-banks of the river Humber, entirely beyond low- 
water mark, and great difficulty was experienced in 
laying the foundations, owing to the treacherous 
nature of the substratum. 

Born in the same year — 1799 — as Mr. Eendel, and 
succeeding him as president in 1854, James Simpson 
had previously turned his energies to the construction 
of waterworks, and designed and executed in 1828 at 
the Chelsea Waterworks his first filter bed, which had 
an area of about one acre, and proved so completely 
successful that no material alteration has been made 
in the system of filtration since that time. During 
the course of a long and prosperous career, Mr. Simp- 
son constructed the works at Seething Wells and 
designed the extensive works for bringing to Bristol the 



118 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

springs and streams of the Menclip Hills. He also 
designed and executed the works for supplying Aber- 
deen with water taken from the river Dee, about 
twenty miles above the city, and, indeed, may be said 
to have made this department of engineering science 
peculiarly his own. 

From 1856, when Eobert Stephenson became presi- 
dent, down to the present day, the chair has been chiefly 
occupied by railway engineers. Stephenson was suc- 
ceeded by Joseph Locke, who has been styled the third 
great leader of the engineering world,the two first places 
being conceded to Stephenson and Brunei. Singularly 
enough, these three great engineers were born within 
two years of each other, and within a similar space 
quitted the scene of their labours. One of the most 
salient characteristics of Mr. Locke w^as his keen ap- 
preciation of economy ; he may indeed be said to have 
made his reputation by constructing the Warrington 
and Birmingham — then designated the Grand Junction 
Eailway — within the estimate, at a cost of between 
^14,000 and £15,000 per mile. The commercial world 
was attracted by this valuable result, and Joseph 
Locke's reputation as an economical engineer assured 
him the direction of many great undertakings. He 
achieved much good work by discouraging the intro- 
duction of engines of various forms and by various 
makers on the same line, and by insisting on a 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 119 

system of uniformity in order to insure economy and 
promptitude in repairs. Mr. Locke left no monu- 
mental works behind him, but he has left a monu- 
mentum cere perennius in the hearts of grateful share- 
holders who have drawn dividends from his lines, 
while the ambitious labours of his rivals reduced them 
to the verge of impecuniosity. 

Only last year the engineering world deplored the 
loss of John Eobinson M^'Clean, who became president 
in 1864. This gentleman, who was a son of the late 
Francis M^ Clean, of Belfast, was born in that city in 
181B, and was educated at the Koyal Academical 
Institution. At the age of twenty-one he went to 
Glasgow, where his career was exceedingly brilliant. 
Studying for two sessions under Professors Thomson, 
Meikleham, and Sir W. Jackson Hooker, Mr. M^ Clean 
obtained high honours in the classes of mathematics 
and natural philosophy, and at the same time pursued 
practical studies in mining engineering and survey- 
ing. On the completion of his university career, he 
entered the of&ce of Messrs. Walker and Burges, civil 
engineers, 23, Great George Street, Westminster, and 
remained with them until 1844. During his stay with 
these gentlemen, Mr. M^ Clean assisted in preparing 
the surveys and contract drawings of the improve- 
ments in Belfast Harbour, and other important public 
works undertaken by Mr. Walker ; but in 1844 the 



120 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

rising young engineer determined to assume the inde- 
pendent exercise of the profession in which he after- 
wards took an active and distinguished part. In the 
very inception of his independent career he became 
the engineer-in-chief of the Furness Eailways, and 
from that time forward v^as intimately associated with 
the great pubhc works of that remarkable district, 
including the Barrow Harbour, Barrow Docks (which 
rival the famous docks at Birkenhead), graving-docks, 
railways, and other works. The modern history of 
Barrow-in-Furness is a record of rapid development 
unparalleled in the annals of industry. Haematite ore 
had long been known to exist in large quantities in 
this remote corner of Lancashire, but the develop- 
ment of the iron mines of Furness dates from the 
introduction of the railway system. 

The growth of Mr. M^ Clean's fortunes more than 
kept pace with the sudden extension of railways. 
Born at the very nick of time, he found himself 
in the possession of his full powers at the moment 
when the railway system — like a young giant — 
stretched forth its iron arms towards every point 
of the compass. Never was opportunity more readily 
seized. Pursuing his advantage with unfailing energy 
and untiring industry, Mr. M^ Clean soon found him- 
self in the foremost rank of his profession. He 
did not confine himself to the construction of rail- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEEES. 121 

ways, for when an agitation was commenced about 
the polluted state of the Thames, which, in 1849, was 
becoming full of sewage, and engineers were invited 
by the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers to send 
in plans for the drainage of London, the rising man 
failed not to contribute his scheme, and had the satis- 
faction of finding it most favourably viewed by the 
Commissioners, who considered it "the best conceived 
and most practicable scheme submitted to them." In 
1849 Mr. M*^ Clean received into partnership Mr. F. 
C. Stillman, and the new firm at once engaged in the 
construction of the South Staffordshire Eailway and 
branches, the Birmingham, "Wolverhampton, and 
Dudley Eailway, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire 
Canal Eeservoirs, and the South Staffordshire Water- 
works, supplying water to a population of nearly half 
a million. 

In the year of the first Great International Exhibi- 
tion, Mr. Maclean carried out extensive works in 
Paris, and, on the death of Mr. Walker, was appointed 
Government engineer to the harbours of Dover, 
Alderney, and St. Catherine's, the Plymouth Break- 
water, and the Shovel Eock Fort at Plymouth. During 
the next fifteen years the successful engineer enjoyed 
the full tide of popularity. He was at once consulting 
engineer to the Birmingham Canal Navigation and 
the Bute Docks at Cardiff, and engineer to the Surrey 



122 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Commercial Docks, the Tottenham and Hampstead 
Junction Kailway, the Bristol and Portishead Pier and 
Kailway, the Cannock Chase and Wolverhampton Kail- 
way, the Furness and Midland Eailway, the Eyde 
Pier Company, and numerous other public works in 
Great Britain. He also held the post of consulting 
engineer to the Lemberg-Czernowitz Austrian Eailway 
and the South-E astern of Portugal Eailway, and was, 
moreover, a fellow of several scientific societies. 

Mr. Mc Clean was preceded in the chair by Mr. 
George Parker Bidder — the bosom friend of Eobert 
Stephenson — and by Sir John Hawkshaw. The career 
of George Bidder affords a peculiar instance of the 
triumph of method. The famous " calculating boy " 
has invariably disclaimed the possession of any extra- 
ordinary amount of memory, and has openly stated 
that a certain degree of jproficiency in the art of mental 
calculation is within the reach of almost every one. 
In a remarkable paper on mental calculation, read by 
Mr. Bidder before the Institution of Civil Engineers 
in the year 1856, he explained with singular lucidity 
and happiness of illustration the operations performed 
by his mind while at work upon figures, and insisted 
very strongly on his favourite doctrine — that mental 
arithmetic can be taught like anything else. 

The whole course of his argument is against the 
necessity for original genius, and in favour of the 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 123 

theory that the slow and gradual acquirement and 
the orderly arrangement of facts are the principal 
qualities demanded of the mental calculator. 

He proceeds thus : — 

*' I do not, however, mean to say that it ought to be 
taught, or that it is desirable to attempt to teach it, 
to the extent to which I have been enabled to carry it. 
I have sacrificed years of labour, I have striven with 
much perseverance, to obtain and to retain a power 
or mastery over numbers which will probably, at all 
times, be as rare as is its utility in the ordinary affairs 
of life. Far be it from me, however, to say that it 
has been of little use to me. Undoubtedly the 
acquirement has attracted towards me a degree of 
notice, which has ended in raising me from the 
position of a common labourer, in which I was born, 
to that of being able to address you as one of the 
vice-presidents of this distinguished Society. But, as 
I have already said, I am not about to lay before you 
any abbreviated process of calculation ; there are no 
" royal roads" to mental arithmetic. Whoever wishes 
to achieve proficiency in that, as in any other branch 
of science, will only succeed by years of labour and of 
patient application. In short, in the solution of any 
arithmetical question, however simple or complicated, 
every mental process must be analogous to that which 
is indicated in working out algebraical formulae. No 



124 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

one step can be omitted ; but all and every one must 
be taken up one after another, in such consecutive 
order, that if reduced to paper the process might 
appear prolix, comjDlicated, and inexpeditious, although 
it is actually arranged with a view of affording relief to 
the memory. And here let me say, that the exercise 
of the memory is the only real strain on the mind, 
and which limits the extent to which mental calculation 
may be carried. It may be imagined that this is some- 
what inconsistent with my previous observation that 
I possess no extraordinary power of memory. But it 
must be borne in mind that my memory is the limit 
by which my mental powers are restricted ; and that 
the processes I pursue are all adopted, simply with a 
view of relieving the registering powers of the mind, 
i.e. the memory. 

■ " I can perhaps convey to you no stronger view of 
this subject than by mentioning, that, were my powers 
of registration at all equal to the powers of reasoning 
or execution, I should have no difficulty, in an in- 
conceivably short space of time, in composing a 
voluminous table of logarithms ; but the power of 
registration limits the power of calculation, and, as I 
said before, it is only with great labour and stress of 
mind that mental calculation can be carried on beyond 
a certain extent. Now, for instance, suppose that I 
had to multiply 89 by 73, I should say instantly 6497 ; 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 125 

if I read the figures written out before me I could not 
express a result more correctly, or more rapidly ; this 
facility has, however, tended to deceive me, for I 
fancied that I possessed a multiplication table up to 
100 times 100, and, when in full practice, even beyond 
that ; but I was in error ; the fact is that I go through 
the entire operation of the computation in that short 
interval of time which it takes me to announce the 
result to you. I multiply 80 by 70, 80 by 3 ; 9 by 70, 
and 9 by 3 ; which will be the whole of the process as 
expressed algebraically, and then I add them up in 
what appears to be merely an instant of time. This 
is done without labour to the mind ; and I can do any 
quantity of the same sort of calculation without any 
labour, and can continue it for a long period; but 
when the number of figures increases, the strain on 
the mind is augmented in a very rapid ratio. As 
compared with the operation on paper in multiplying 
three figures by three figures, you have three lines of 
four figures each, or twelve figures in the j)rocess to 
be added up ; in multiplying six figures into six 
figures you have six lines of seven figures, or forty-two 
figures to be added up. The time, therefore, in 
registration on paper will be as 12 to 42. But the pro- 
cess in the mind is different. Not only have I that 
additional number of facts to create, but they must be 
imprinted on the mind. The impressions to be made 



126 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

are more in number, they are also more varied, and 
the impression required is so much deeper, that instead 
of being hke 3 or 4 to 1, it is something Hke 16 to 1. 
Instead of increasing by the square, I beheve it in- 
creases by the fourth power. I do not pretend to say 
that it can be expressed mathematically, but the ratio 
increases so rapidly that it soon limits the useful 
effect of mental calculation. As a great effort, I have 
multiplied twelve places of figures by twelve places 
of figures ; but that has required much time, and 
was a great strain upon the mind. Therefore, in 
stating my conviction that mental arithmetic could be 
taught, I would desire it to be understood, that the 
limits within which it may be usefully and properly 
applied should be restricted to multiplying three figures 
by three figures. Up to that extent, I believe it may be 
taught with considerable facility, and will be received 
by young minds, so disposed, quite as easily as the 
ordinary rules of arithmetic." 

In 1862 Sir John Hawkshaw became president. 
During a highly successful career this gentleman has 
been engaged on many works of the first magnitude, 
among which may be cited the Lancashire and York- 
shire Eailway, the Charing Cross Eailway, and Lon- 
donderry Bridge. Sir John Hawkshaw also acquired 
great reputation by the resource displayed by him 
on the failure of the Middle Level sluice at St. Ger- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 127 

mans, near Lynn, where, instead of constructing a 
new sluice, he invented and erected syphons for the 
drainage of the district. Sir John Hawkshaw is an 
engineer of advanced ideas, and is a warm advocate 
of the Anglo-French tunnel under the Channel. 

In 1866 Mr. M^ Clean was succeeded by Mr. John 
Fowler, an engineer of the first rank, who has con- 
structed lines in nearly every part of England, the 
Great Northern and Western systems in Ireland, the 
Metropolitan Eailway, and numerous other railways 
in and around London. 

Between 1868 and the date of writing, the chair 
has been occupied by four engineers of the highest 
distinction. Charles Hutton Gregory — a son of Dr. 
Gregory, the distinguished Professor of Mathematics 
at the Eoyal Academy, Woolwich — was brought up in 
the works of Messrs. Bramah and Co., and was early 
in life appointed the resident engineer of the Croydon 
Eailway. He subsequently became connected with 
the Bristol and Exeter, and all the lines of railway 
within that district, and has latterly been generally 
consulted by the Crown Agents for the Colonies. 

Mr. Charles Blacker Vignoles holds one of the oldest 
commissions now extant in the British army. He 
was on active service in Spain, and distinguished 
himself in a " forlorn hope," whence he was lucky 
enough to escape with a whole skin. On the advent of 



128 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

"piping times of peace," he turned his mathematical 
knowledge to good account, and, as became the grand- 
son of old Dr. Hutton, he embraced the career of 
a civil engineer. Mr. Yignoles constructed many 
notable works in England, and also took his share in 
the parliamentary fights of the last generation. He 
then turned his attention to Eussia, where he made 
several lines of railway, and the famous Kieff suspen- 
sion bridge. Mr. Vignoles has also had a large share 
in constructing the railway system of South America. 
Mr. Thomas Hawksley — who succeeded Mr. Vignoles 
as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers — 
commenced life as a surveyor, but speedily attained 
celebrity as a surveyor for water and gas, and has 
designed and constructed many important works at 
Nottingham, Liverpool, and other places. In the 
present year Mr. Hawksley gave place to Mr. Thomas 
Elliot Harrison. This gentleman was brought up in 
the office of Eobert Stephenson, in whose estimation 
he stood very high on account of his clearness of 
judgment and fertility of resource. Mr. Harrison has 
acquired deserved celebrity by the construction of the 
High-Level bridge at Newcastle, and of the docks and 
other great works connected with the North -Eastern 
Eailway. 

The illustrious roll of presidents, and the record of 
their achievements, form after all but a small part of 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEEBS. 129 

the history of the Institution of Civil Engineers. 
Among the members are Sir William Armstrong, who 
achieved celebrity by the invention of the hydraulic 
crane and the gun which is called after him ; his great 
rival in the manufacture of ordnance, Sir Joseph 
Whitworth, the founder of the famous Whitworth 
scholarships; Dr. C. W. Siemens, whose researches 
in metallurgy have acquired for him a world-wide 
reputation ; James Abernethy, James Brunlees, J. F. 
Bateman, Joseph Bazalgette, Sir William Fairbairn, 
Isaac Lowthian Bell, Sir George Elliot, William 
Menelaus, and many more able engineers and in- 
ventors, to mention all of whom would be a lengthy 
task. 

Suffice it to say that during the last half-century 
the genius of English engineers has displayed its 
power in every region of either hemisphere. While 
the vast peninsula of Hindostan was being knit to- 
gether by iron bonds, an enterprising band of English 
engineers laid the foundation of the railway system of 
South America. The success of the Maua Eailway — 
designed and constructed by Edward Brainerd Webb 
— opened the eyes of the Brazilians to the value of 
railway communication in a country of such " magni- 
ficent distances" that railroads are the only possible 
roads. From Brazil the desire for railways spread to 
the Eiver Plate, where many important railways have 



130 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

been made, and others are still in course of construc- 
tion by Mr. Webb and other eminent engineers. 
On the transandine side of the continent much has 
also been done in facilitating means of communi- 
cation and opening up to commerce the immense 
resources of South America. The Peruvian Govern- 
ment is constructing, under the advice of Mr. 
Edward Woods, about 500 miles of railway, and 
the Chilian Government about 300 miles. Eailways 
have also been introduced into Japan; but the offer 
of a railway to the Emperor of China has not 
yet met with a cordial acceptance. Nearer home 
many great works have been undertaken, among 
which may be cited the Amsterdam Ship Canal — now 
being executed under the direction of Sir John Hawk- 
shaw and Mr. Dirks — and large additions to the dock 
accommodations of Liverpool. To these last it was 
originally proposed to add several of Mr. Edwin 
Clark's hydraulic docks; but the invention of the 
pneumatic floating dock by Messrs. Latimer Clark 
and Standsfield has led to the adoption of the newer 
and far more economical substitute. 

It is gratifying to find that, in the great race of life, 
English engineers still hold their own, but it is also 
worthy of remark that the professors of an important 
and exclusively modern department of engineering 
have not hitherto been deemed worthy of the highest 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 131 

honours conferred by the Institution of Civil Engineers. 
Perhaps the existence of a " Society of Telegraphic 
Engineers " explains the seeming oversight ; for, 
although no member of the army of electricians has 
5^et occupied the post of President of the Institution 
of Civil Engineers, the society in Great George Street 
has shown no reluctance in taking to her bosom these 
professors of a new science. In fact the Institution is 
sufficiently catholic in its views, and opens its doors 
to no less than four classes of persons. Honorary 
members are '' distinguished persons " not engaged in 
the practice of the profession. Among the fifteen 
honorary members are the Emperor of Brazil, the 
Prince of Wales, the Duke of Connaught, and General 
Todleben. The members number 793, and have 
already been — so far as space will permit — individually 
referred to. In addition to the actual members, 1295 
associates are enrolled. These gentlemen are not 
necessarily civil engineers by profession, but must be 
qualified to concur with civil engineers in the advance- 
ment of professional knowledge, and moreover must, 
like the actual members, have attained the age of 
twenty-five years — a highly salutary regulation. Ex- 
press provision is made for the admission of students, 
who must be between eighteen and twenty-six years of 
age, and must be or have been pupils of members or 
Associates of the Institution. At the present moment 



132 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

289 students are admitted to many of the most im- 
portant privileges of membership on paying a sub- 
scription of <£2 2s. per annum. 

A few years since the Council of the Institution 
made an inquiry into the present system of educating 
engineers both at home and abroad, and elicited much 
valuable information ; but in consequence of a feeling 
among the members that it was better to let things 
alone, nothing was done. Experts on the Continent, 
as well as in England, expressed grave doubts con- 
cerning the advantage of a severe training in the 
sciences bearing upon the profession before engaging 
in its actual practice. In true English style, the 
systems adopted in France and Germany were decried 
as producing a race of great schoolboys, who knew 
nothing " practical," were childishly ignorant of 
mechanical engineering, and displayed at critical 
moments an utter absence of that fertility of resource 
which is one of the characteristics of the English 
engineer. This is all excellently well, but at the same 
time those Englishmen who have been contaminated 
by foreign influences may be excused if they decline 
to consider theoretical knowledge a positive drawback 
in the engineering or any other profession. Continued 
insistence on the virtues of the "practical man" is 
apt to render one weary of that overpraised individual. 
It is easy to admire his joluck, his resource, bis handi- 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 133 

ness in overcoming difficulties, but it is now and then 
impossible to resist the conclusion that, if the prac- 
tical man had possessed a little more scientific know- 
ledge, he would have found fewer difficulties to over- 
come. The whole question appears to be mainly one 
of time. At first sight, it is of course dreadful to 
think of arriving at manhood without having acquired 
anything but theory ; but, on the other hand, it is 
questionable whether the time invested in scientific 
study is not rapidly recouped when the young theorist 
is set to practical work. On the one hand is the fault 
into which the universities of Oxford and Cambridge 
have fallen, viz. that of keeping men at school till they 
are twenty-three years old, an age at which a man 
ought not only to have left school, but have acquired 
at least the power of doing work in some walk of life ; 
while on the other is the obvious disadvantage of 
bringing up a race of half-educated youths, whose 
only chance of getting on in life is to blunder on 
from failure to failure, until success is achieved more 
by force of character than by constructive skill. 
Possibly the true technical education — like many other 
things — has yet to be discovered. 

Members, associates, and students of the Insti- 
tution are alike stimulated to exertion by many 
premiums and medals, for which ample funds have 
been provided by the Telford, Miller, and Howard 



134 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

bequests, and the Manby donation. Interesting pro- 
ceedings take place at the ordinary meetings of the 
Society, which are often protracted over several 
sittings. The papers read are considered the property 
of the Institution, and for this or some other inexplic- 
able reason, the press are severely enjoined not to 
publish any record of the proceedings beyond the 
official precis of the original paper presented to them 
by the Society. In many cases of great public interest 
this policy of restriction is severely felt. The griev- 
ance is not so much that only a precis of the original 
paper may be reported, but that the discussion is 
entirely reserved for the Transactions of the Society. 
A notable instance of the inconvenience occasioned 
by this rule occurred last year. A great debate was 
expected on a subject of the highest importance — no 
less than the break of gauge in India. I found the 
great room of the Institution crowded with eager 
debaters and anxious listeners. Mr. Thornton's able 
paper provoked a discussion which will long remain in 
my memory as one of the most remarkable for interest 
and vivacity that I have been privileged to witness. 
For months the public remained in a benighted state 
on the Indian railway question, simply because the 
publication of the discussion on the most interesting 
question before the engineering world was impossible, 
except through the ordinary official medium. 



I 



THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 135 

As for myself, I enjoyed the proceedings immensely, 
simply because I was not allowed to write about them, 
and my appreciation of the argumentative power and 
the opposite theories of the great engineers who 
entered the arena was not dimmed by the knowledge 
that- work was then and there by me to be performed ; 
but on leaving Great George Street, after each 
brilliant meeting, I could not help regretting that 
before the record of the discussions could reach the 
public eye the heat of battle would have passed 
away, and the Indian railway question — undergoing 
the fate of other questions — have crystallized into a 
lifeless thing of the past. 



136 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



V. 

THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 

One of the first to recognize the truth that science has 
in modern times acquired a range not to be comprised 
by any one institution, the Society of Arts has ever 
been ready to assist the formation of any association 
having a special object, and has recently established 
special sections of its own, such as the Indian and the 
Chemical Section. Specialty is, indeed, one of the 
salient features of the nineteenth century. Special 
knowledge and special power are everywhere in 
demand. In law, in the arts, and more especially in 
science, the specialist is looked upon with a peculiarly 
favourable eye. Mankind gratefully acknowledges its 
obHgations to the man who devotes his life to the 
attainment of perfect knowledge within a certain 
narrow sphere. Never was the " Jack of all trades 
and master of none" doctrine more implicitly received 
than at the present moment ; and never was the 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 137 

" life-view " (as he calls it) of my friend Professor 
Engestrom so generally accepted. The professor — 
who is constantly insisting that the aim and object of 
life cannot be too early decided upon and too 
rigorously adhered to — is fond of citing the instance 
of the famous grammarian who devoted his life to the 
dative case. Doubtless this scheme of life, leaving 
the world's work to be done by infinite division of 
labour, does not meet with much sympathy from 
old-fashioned people, who incline to the idea that 
more perfect manhood is achieved by a general 
student than by a narrow specialist. These well- 
meaning people urge that in olden times men were 
more many-sided than they now are, and that one 
individual might be a good soldier, sailor, lawyer, and 
politician, and therefore enjoy a fuller life than his 
descendant of to-day ; but it behoves us to recollect 
that it was not difficult to know all that was to be 
learned four hundred years ago. The recorded wisdom 
of the western world might have easily been contained 
in a hundred tomes, and, with the exception of mathe- 
matics, science in its exact sense was unknown. 
Astronomy, struggling in the trammels of traditional 
cosmogonies, was largely mingled with astrology. 
Botany was confined to the enumeration of the pro- 
perties of simples plucked under certain lunar in- 
fluences. Chemistry was in the alchemical stage, 



138 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

busying itself with the elixir vitse ; and the metallurgy 
of the period consisted of researches into the ima- 
ginary transmutation of metals and the vain pursuit 
of the philosopher's stone. 

During the last two centuries more advance in 
scientific knowledge has been made than during all 
the thousands of previous years, but it is during the 
present age that facilities of communicating thought 
and its results have led to the splitting up of the 
sciences into minute divisions and subdivisions. As 
lawyers have divided law until the pursuit of each 
narrow branch has become a distinct profession ; as 
doctors have dissected the human body and divided it 
among them, one taking the eye, and another the ear, 
the brain, the heart, the lungs, the throat, or the 
stomach as his peculiar domain of research ; so has 
the mantle of Friar Bacon or of Schwartz — fit repre- 
sentatives of the ancient alchemist or astrologer — 
been cut up into many fragments, and distributed 
among astronomers, naturalists, physiologists, botan- 
ists, geologists, physicists, metallurgists, palaeontolo- 
gists, and chemists. 

The immense development of chemical research in 
this country by Davy, Dalton, and their contempo- 
raries very naturally suggested the formation of a 
society having for its object the advancement of 
chemical science. It is true that the Eoyal Society 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 139 

was always ready to welcome the accomplished 
chemist, and it would argue slight knowledge of the 
history of chemistry to overlook the brilliant dis- 
coveries made in the laboratory of the Eoyal Institu- 
tion, but it was, nevertheless, felt that a special 
society was needed for the encouragement of chemistry 
as distinguished from physics and other cognate 
sciences. It was thought that chemistry had at 
length grown big enough to have — like the ancestral 
O'Donoghue — a ^'boat of its own," and the important 
bearing of the newly-developed science upon the 
industry of the country was urged as a powerful and 
tempting argument in favour of stimulating chemical 
investigation. The honour of the initiative is due to 
Mr. Eobert Warington, who convened a meeting for 
the purpose of taking into consideration the formation 
of a Chemical Society. The meeting was held in the 
well-known rooms of the Society of Arts on February 
23rd, 1841. Among those present were the excellent 
and ubiquitous Mr. Arthur Aikin, W. E. Grove, Lyon 
Playfair, and Professor Graham, who occupied the 
chair. The formation of a Chemical Society having 
been resolved, the objects of the Society were declared 
to be the promotion of chemistry, and of those 
branches of science immediately connected with it, by 
the reading, discussion, and subsequent publication of 
original communications, and the formation of a 



140 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

cliemical library and museum. The annual subscrip- 
tion of members resident within twenty miles of 
London was fixed at two pounds, and of those residing 
beyond that distance at one pound. Thomas Graham 
was elected the first president ; J. T. Cooper, W. T. 
Brande, J. F. Daniell, and K. Phillips, vice-presidents. 
Arthur Aikin — still full of energy — was appointed 
treasurer ; and Eobert Warington and E. F. Tesche- 
macher, secretaries. 

A council was appointed, the names of seventy-seven 
gentlemen who had become members were then read, 
and the Society adjourned until Tuesday, the 13th 
April. The Society now continued to meet regularly 
from time to time, and between 1841 and 1847 pub- 
lished three volumes of Memoirs and Eeports of 
Proceedings. At the latter date the members 
numbered between two and three hundred, and it was 
therefore considered desirable that steps should be 
taken for obtaining a Eoyal Charter of Incorporation, 
which was granted in the following year. In accord- 
ance with this document, the Chemical Society consists 
of Fellows, honorary and foreign Members, and 
Associates. The Fellows elect out of their own body 
a governing council consisting of a president, four or 
more vice-presidents, a treasurer, two secretaries, a 
foreign secretary, and twelve other Fellows. At the 
present moment the presidential chair is filled by Dr. 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 141 

Odling, and among the vice-presidents who have filled 
the office of president are found the familiar names of 
Brodie, Frankland, Hofmann, Lyon Playfair, and 
Williamson. Mr. W. H. Perkin and Dr. Enssell are 
the efficient secretaries ; Dr. Hugo Miller fills the 
post of foreign secretary, and Mr. Abel acts as 
treasm-er. Other magnates of the chemical world 
figure in the list of the council, notably Drs. Eoscoe, 
Maxwell Simpson, Stenhouse, and Armstrong. The 
post of librarian and editor of the Society's journal — 
a duty much increased of late by the incorporation of 
translations of foreign papers — is ably filled by Mr. 
Henry Watts, whose tremendous " Dictionary " is a 
lasting witness to the way in which he jierforms his 
valuable work. Candidates for admission to the 
Society are proposed on a form of recommendation 
subscribed by five Fellows of the Society at least, 
three of whom recommend the neophyte from " per- 
sonal knowledge," while the remaining two may 
recommend from *' general knowledge" — whatever 
that precise form of knowledge may be worth. After 
being balloted for and duly elected by three -fourths 
of the voters, the new Fellow pays an admission fee of 
two pounds and his first year's subscription or life- 
composition, and is then received into the bosom of 
the association by the president, who, taking him by 
the hand, says, '' Mr. , I do, by the authority 



142 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

and in the name of the Chemical Society, admit you a 
Fellow thereof." At the present moment the Fellows 
number about eight hundred. Of the Associate — a 
species of *^ free-list subscriber" — only one instance 
exists. The number of foreign Members is limited to 
forty, but on this list are found many of the most illus- 
trious names in the history of chemistry. First on 
the roll stands Balard, the discoverer of bromine ; and 
next to him Berthelot, who contributed to chemical 
science the Syntheses of Formiates, of Alcohol, and of 
Acetylene. Boussingault, famous by his researches 
into the Chemistry of Vegetation, follows next, and 
precedes the illustrious Bunsen, whose name is 
rendered dear to the scientific world by the invention 
of the Bunsen burner, by the perfection of gas analysis, 
and by the discovery of caesium, and rubidium, and 
the spectrum analysis. Next follows Cahours, whose 
researches in potato sj)irit, and determination — in 
conjunction with Hofmann — of the phosphorus bases, 
are fresh in the memory ; Canizzaro, made famous by 
the Synthesis of Aromatic Alcohols, and his considera- 
tions on Atomic Weights from Specific Heat ; and 
Chevreul, identified with the Chemistry of Fats and 
the Theory of Colours. The name of Deville recalls 
aluminium ; and that of Dumas the Theory of 
Types and Organic Analysis. Many other famous 
chemists are on this remarkable list — notably 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 143 

Wohler, of Gottingen, who, so long ago .as 1828, 
established the Synthesis of Urea, and Wurtz, 
the discoverer of Glycol and Ethylamine ; Stas, well 
known by his researches on Atomic Weights ; and 
Kekule, of Bonn, identified with Atomicity and 
Thiacetic Acid. Two great names now challenge 
attention. Kolbe, of Leipzig, celebrated by the 
Electrolysis of Fatty Acids — by the Synthesis of 
Formic Acid from nascent Hydrogen and Carbonic 
Acid — by the Synthesis of Oxalate of Sodium from 
Carbonic Acid and Sodium, and by the Theory of 
Isomeric Alcohols. Pasteur has not only written his 
name in the history of chemistry by his discovery of 
optical differences in Amylic Alcohol and in Tartaric 
Acid, but has become famous in physiological contro- 
versy by his experiments in biogenesis. Conducted in 
a truly philosophical spirit, these famous experiments 
form an epoch in the long contest between the advocates 
and opponents of the theory of spontaneous generation. 
From its foundation to the present day, the 
Chemical Society has done much good solid work. 
Eecorded among its proceedings are many papers 
which have left their mark on the history of chemistry. 
From its earliest days the Society has shown a keen 
appreciation of Teutonic research, and has devoted 
much time and pains to the translation of papers by 
eminent German chemists. In 1841 translations were 



144 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

read of the papers on " Cacodyl Compounds," con- 
tributed by Professor Bunsen, then of Marburg. 
During the next two years Dr. Stenhouse read many 
papers before the Chemical Society. Aniline now 
attracted the attention of Muspratt and Hofmann — in 
whose laboratory Perkin was destined to discover the 
commercial value of mauve. Hofmann himself com- 
municated papers on the Metamorphoses of Indigo, 
and on Styrole. 

In 1845 Hofmann pursued his researches on aniline, 
and in 1848, while professor at the Eoyal College of 
Chemistry, contributed to the Society his researches 
on the Volatile Bases, including the papers on the 
" Action of Cyanogen on Aniline, Toluidine, and 
Cumidine," on the " Action of Iodine on Aniline," and 
on the " Action of Chloride, Bromide, and Iodide of 
Cyanogen on Aniline." "While Hofmann was pursuing 
this line of investigation, Kolbe and Frankland were 
making researches into the nature of the Organic 
Eadicals, and Liebig contributed papers from time to 
time. In 1857 Church and Perkin communicated the 
results of their study of '' some new colouring matters, 
Derivatives of Dinitrobenzole, etc.," and Mr. Perkin 
followed this by a paper on the " Action of Cyanogen 
on Naphthalamine." At this period Dr. Lyon Play- 
fair also sent in papers on the '' Nitro-Prussides," and 
other subjects. 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 145 

In 1858 Wanklyn communicated a paper on the 
Synthesis of Propionic Acid, followed at a later date 
by the Synthesis of Propione, and in 1863, then 
working in conjunction with Erlenmeyer, produced 
Hexylic Compounds from Mannite. 

In the pages of the Journal of the Chemical Society, 
Kopp has recorded his investigations into the Specific 
Heat of Solid Bodies, and Kolbe his Synthesis of 
OxaHc Acids and his Prognosis of New Alcohols and 
Aldehydes. 

The late Ernest Chapman read papers on many 
subjects — in particular on Limited Oxidation. In 

1867 a paper describing the Ammonia Process of 
Water Analysis was communicated by Wanklyn, 
Chapman, and Smith ; and was followed in the next 
year by the rival system of Frankland and Armstrong, 
which brought about a vigorous controversy. Dr. 
Frankland, working in conjunction with the late Mr. 
Duppa, also produced some excellent papers on Ethide 
of Boron and on the Eeduction of Oxalic Ether to 
Leucic Ether by the action of Zinc-Ethyl. The year 

1868 was marked by Dr. Siemens' paper on the 
Eegenerative Gas Furnace as applied to the manufac- 
ture of cast steel ; and more recently Isaac Lowthian 
Bell contributed a valuable paper on the Chemistry of 
the Blast-furnace. 

The Chemical Society is one of those highly favoured 

L 



146 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

bodies wliich, like the Eoyal Society and the Geological 
Society, are permitted to occupy a portion of Burling- 
ton House. A magnificent suite of rooms is allotted 
to it. There is a handsome library, admirably 
appointed, and enriched by a fine collection of 
chemical works, and regular files of English and 
foreign scientific periodicals. Adjoining the library 
is the inevitable tea-room, without which the domain 
of no scientific society is complete. Beneath these 
apartments is the great room of the society, fitted uj) 
with benches in ascending order, like those of an 
ordinary lecture-room. Behind a long table, more or 
less encumbered with chemical specimens and 
apparatus, sit the president and the two secretaries — 
the two latter gentlemen being charged with the 
onerous duty of reading papers in the absence of their 
authors. The presence of a number of ballot-boxes 
reveals the fact that several gentlemen recommended 
on the basis of " personal " or " general " knowledge 
are up for election ; and the reception of many 
recently-elected Fellows, according to the form pre- 
scribed, indicates that the Chemical Society is adding 
largely to its list of members. This is a cheering 
sign, but my spirits are slightly dashed when I observe 
the extreme youth of many among the audience. As 
the names of the visitors — of whom each Fellow may 
introduce two — are read aloud, I find that their 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 147 

number does not account for the remarkable pre- 
ponderance of young gentlemen. On inquiry I find 
that these must, therefore, be actual Fellows. I 
naturally experience some little surprise at this dis- 
covery, as I was once inclined — in the innocence of my 
heart — to attribute a certain distinction to the mystic 
letters F.C.S. Now, no human being is more incKned 
to encourage youth, and more disposed to regret its 
loss, than myself. It has long been an article of my 
creed that when a man is able to do good work, he is 
old enough to be entrusted with it, and I never lose 
an opportunity of insisting that in life the '' time " is 
not, as musicians say, "taken quickly enough," but I 
find it difficult to resist the conviction that many of 
the juvenile Fellows of the Chemical Society cannot 
possibly have attained any higher rank than that of 
students or of assistants to lecturers. I may be 
mistaken. The young gentlemen referred to may 
have attained eminence in the chemical world, or the 
letters F.C.S. may not be intended to convey any 
grave significance, but I confess that I am puzzled. 

Elections over, the reading of papers is proceeded 
with. Many of these are important, and a particularly 
interesting account of researches in Phenol is read 
by Dr. Armstrong, the chemical professor of the 
London Institution. Time passes quickly, and the 
attention given to the business of the evening is 



148 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

perfectly warranted by its engrossing character. 
Much revolving these things, I at length emerge into 
Piccadilly admiring the youth of the Fellows of the 
Chemical Society, and wondering why a powerful 
body hke this, possessing a fine library, has yet no 
museum of its own. 



( 149 ) 



VI. 

THE DEPAETMENT OF SCIENCE 
AND AET. 

It would be difficult to find a more curious and in- 
structive illustration of the growth of English institu- 
tions than the Science and Art Department of the 
Committee of Council on Education. In other 
ignorant countries — such as France, for instance — 
there is always a Minister of Public Instruction, a sort 
of chief schoolmaster, who is supposed to look after the 
education of the million ; but in this country it was 
long deemed unnecessary to create a minister without 
any perceptible functions. Five-and-twenty years 
ago there was little talk about education, and, so far 
as the many were concerned, there was none. The 
reports of Government inspectors have clearly demon- 
strated that the so-called teaching of the National 
Schools practically amounted to nothing, and could 
hardly be designated education without provoking a 
laugh. Since then much has been done in the way 



150 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of educating the loeople, and the Lord President of 
the Council has been called upon to fulfil in England 
the duties assigned abroad to the Minister of Public 
Instruction. This procedure is intensely English. 
A brand new office, created to supply a fresh and 
growing want, would hardly have suited the insular 
genius. We had a Lord President of the Council 
whose duty apparently was to perform presidential 
instead of, as was said of the archdeacon, " archi- 
diaconal" functions. He was paid a good round 
salary, and should be made to work for it. Hence 
education is represented in the Upper House by the 
Lord President, and in the Commons by the Vice- 
President of the Council, to the great delight of 
Englishmen, who love to explain to the " intelligent 
foreigner" that, although they have no special Minister 
of Instruction, they yet have the thing under another 
name. 

The Department of Science and Art was formed out 
of three more or less elementary bodies — the Depart- 
ment of Practical Art, the Royal College of Chemistry, 
and the Eoyal School of Mines, whereof the second 
has been long since absorbed by the third, which, 
although now included under the General Department, 
enjoys a distinct existence, a separate constitution, 
and a clearly defined income of its own. I would 
fain have discoursed in separate essays on the rise. 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 151 

progress, and ultimate destiny of these several insti- 
tutions, but this Gordian Imot is all too toughly 
interlaced to yield to my blunted penknife. So far 
as my limited powers go I will endeavour to set forth 
the pecuHar functions of each body, but dissever them 
I neither must nor may. All are now linked together 
.under the broad title of the Department of Science 
and Art. The Department was regularly constituted 
in 1853 by a Minute of the Treasury, in consequence 
of the rej)resentations of the Board of Trade (under 
whose jurisdiction the Department of Practical Art, 
^bove alluded to, was at that time included), was 
j.3laced under the Committee of Council on Educa- 
tion, and during the first six years of its existence 
was mainly employed in reorganizing the system of 
Art Instruction. 

Without going into the particulars of the purchase 
of the Gore House Estate — bought partly with the 
surplus funds left in the hands of the Eoyal Commis- 
sioners for the Exhibition of 1851 — it may be sufficient 
to state that the late Prince Consort induced the 
'Government of Lord Palmerston to build the well- 
known "Brompton Boilers," at a cost of a615,000, the 
Commissioners giving the land, for the purpose — in 
the first place — of exhibiting the collection of pictures 
presented to the country by Mr. Sheepshanks on the 
iexpress condition that the donor should see a building 



152 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

erected to receive his gift. Subsequent additions to> 
the "Boilers" afforded room for the pictures till then 
exhibited in Marlborough House, to which the old 
Schools of Design held at Somerset House and else- 
where were transferred for a while — ultimately to find 
their home in South Kensington. A Parliamentary 
grant of ^910,000 was devoted to this latter purpose, 
and South Kensington became the fulcrum of the Art 
teaching of the country. Unwilling that the metro- 
polis should absorb all the advantages of artistic 
instruction, Mr. Henry Cole, the Secretary of the 
Department, undertook the onerous task of extending 
these benefits to the entire country through the in- 
strumentality of parish and other local schools. The 
old Schools of Design had been encom-aged after a 
peculiar fashion. Grants of money were made to 
certain towns on the condition that they should them- 
selves furnish an equal sum to that contributed by 
the State ; for instance, Manchester received ^600 on 
condition that that city should add an equal sum. 
This system was exposed to many disadvantages. In 
the first place, the Government grants were difficult 
to get. Kidderminster strove in vain for a grant on 
the ground that the manufacture of carpets required a 
School of Design, and Stourbridge pleaded her glass 
manufactures without success, while in those cities 
where schools actually existed the Government almost 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 153' 

invariably got the worst of the bargain. Local contri- 
butions came in slowly. In many cases it was found 
impossible to keep faith with the Government, and the 
results were lamentably incommensurate with the 
outlay of public money. It was at once seen that 
until a properly organized staff of teachers was formed 
nothing valid could be done, and energetic measures 
were taken to supply this need. A body of properly 
certificated teachers was formed. These instructors 
received at first a certain salary, coupled with an addi- 
tional remuneration, according to the results of their 
teaching, shown by their pupils under examination. 
Ultimately this plan — which was not without merit of 
its own— was superseded by the system of " payment 
for results." 

For the first six years of its existence, from 1853 to- 
1859, the Department found Art easier to manage 
than Science, and experienced very great difficulty in 
organizing the scientific branch. Until the year 1859, 
elementary instruction in science was hardly attain- 
able by the artisan. It is true that some of the 
principal mechanics' institutions scattered over the 
great towns had from time to time ''popular" lectures 
on scientific subjects, illustrated frequently by experi- 
ments, diagrams, or specimens, but these lectures 
rarely extended to systematic courses. In very few 
institutions were any classes for collective instruction. 



154 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

scarcely any had laboratories, and whatever collec- 
tions of natural objects existed were almost always 
ill-arranged and incomplete, even for the pm'poses 
of very limited instruction. A few exceptions to this 
description existed in Glasgow, Edinbm-gh, Man- 
chester, Liverpool, and London, but in the smaller 
towns, and in manufacturing and rural districts, no 
instruction was to be acquired. Various attempts 
had been made to remedy this state of things. The 
creation of a Central Science School in the metro- 
polis was strongly recommended, but has not been 
carried out to this day. Meanwhile attempts were 
made to kindle into life what were called Trade 
Schools. 

These proved such a conspicuous failure, that when 
the late Lord S alisbury became Lord President of the 
Council, he resolved that he would either abolish the 
word Science out of the title of the department, or he 
would cause some science to be given to the country. 
Accordingly, about the year 1859, certain principles 
were laid down which enabled the Department to 
encourage the teaching of certain sciences bearing 
upon industry. These principles have since been 
carried much further. Stated briefly and broadly, 
the system now at w^ork is, that any locality that 
pleases may establish a Science School or class. It 
may be held — in the words of Mr. Cole — in a garret, 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 155 

or may be held in a cellar, without concerning the 
Department in any way, unless a grant in aid of 
building be asked for — when certain conditions are 
insisted on. The teachers are appointed by the local 
committees, and must have proved their competency 
by examination. The local committee simply notifies 
the Department that it has constituted itself, and may 
then proceed to teach any one or all of the twenty- 
three sciences enumerated in the Science Directory, 
and may request that at a certain period of the year 
the students be examined. 

The examination is conducted by papers sent down 
from the office in London, and on the results the 
teachers get payments, and the students prizes. Pay- 
ments are made on behalf of those who are interpreted 
to belong to the artisan class — clearly defined in the 
Science Directory — but the prizes are open to all. 
The theory is that the artisan class pay moderate 
fees, and the middle classes larger fees. Gratuitous 
instruction is now abolished, the payment of fees 
being insisted upon as a qualification for undergoing 
examination. Teachers are paid by results, that is, 
80 much per student of the artisan class that passes 
examination successfully. The payments are in the 
following proportions : — ^1 for every second class, in 
either the elementary or the advanced stage ; ^2 for 
a first class in either of these stages, or for a second 



156 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

class in honours, and £4 for a first class in honours. 
The object of this system of remuneration is to directly 
encourage the formation of a class of teachers of 
elementary science, and to stimulate them to activity 
by granting payment for "results" alone. The suc- 
cess of this plan has been rapid. In 1860, 500 
persons were under instruction in nine schools; in 
1867, 10,230 persons were under instruction in 212 
schools ; while in 1870, 34,283 persons were taught in 
799 schools. From 1870 to 1872 the rate of increase 
slackened, as no more than 36,783 persons are re- 
ported as having been instructed during the latter 
year. Fourteen of these obtained gold, twenty silver, 
and thirty-three bronze medals, while 5931 received 
prizes. Between 1872 and 1873 a tremendous leap 
was made, the number reported under instruction in 
May, 1873, being 48,546, to whom sixteen gold, 
eighteen silver, and thirty-four bronze medals, and 
7215 prizes were given. 

The expenditure of the Science and Art Depart- 
ment during the financial year 1872-73, exclusive 
of the vote for the Geological Survey, amounted to 
^209,117 2s. 2cZ., and with the addition of ^£21,385 Is. 
granted for that important object, reached the grand 
total of ^230,502 3s. 2^. In the succeeding financial 
year 1873-74, the total expenditure reached £262,503, 
showing an increase of j£32,000 16s. lOd., and in the 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 157 

current year, dating from the 1st April, 1874, to the 
31st March, 1875, it is proposed to devote an increase 
of £15,667 to the Department of Science and Art 
bringing up the estimates to £278,170. This sum, 
£278,170, is distributed as follows :— 

Administration of Science and Art Department £5,422 

Schools of Science and Art 120,110 

Purchases and Circulation 23,682 

South Kensington Museum ... 38,024 

Services common to the several divisions ... 28,177 

Branch Museum, Bethnal Green ... ... 5,810 

School of Mines and Geological Museum ... 8,998 

Edinburgh Museum 9,824 

Royal Dublin Society 1,823 

Botanic Gardens (Dublin) ... 2,148 

Leinster Lawn (Dublin) 200 

Museum of Natural History ... 1,672 

Library (Dublin) 1,677 

Royal College of Science (Dublin) 6,883 

Royal Hibernian Academy ... 300 

Royal Zoological Society of Ireland ... ... 500 

Geological Survey of United Kingdom ... 22,920 

"Without going into minute details of increase and 
decrease, it may be said briefly that £168 is saved on 
the item Administration, £605 on Purchases and 
Circulation, £372 on the South Kensington Museum, 
and £445 on the Eoyal Dublin Society. An increase 
of £877 is devoted to Services Common to both 
Departments, £240 to Bethnal Green, £592 to the 



158 



SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



Edinburgh Museum, and ^£253 to the Geological 
Survey. It is, however, gratifying to record that 
.-£15,550, or nearly the entire net increase, is devoted 
to the Schools of Science and Art, raising this item 
from £104,560 in 1873-74 to ^9120,110 in 1874-75. 
The total increase under this head is put down at 
d£15,550, but a saving on the School of Naval Archi- 
tecture (now removed to Greenwich) of ^0310, and a 
deduction of £50 from scholarships, bring the net 
amount disposable for other branches up to £15,910, 
distributed thus : — 



Schools of Science and Aet. 

Grants in Aid to Schools of Science and Art 

Science ... 

Salaries of National Art Training Schools 

Maintenance of Students 

Public Elementary Schools 

Artisans attending Night Classes 

National Scholarships, etc 

Local Secretaries 

Preparation for Papers, etc., for Ex 

aminations 

Inspection and Examination 

Local Committees 

Prizes 

Scholarships 

Grants for Examples 

Building Grants , 



Increase. 


Total. 


£7,500 ... 


£40,500 


s 300 ... 


2,100 


— 


2,800 


4,000 ... 


15,500 


900 ... 


17,500 


100 ... 


1,600 


300 ... 


1,300 


1,150 ... 


6,750 


960 ... 


12,310 


500 ... 


3,800 


800 ... 


7,800 


— ... 


750 


400 ... 


5,400 


— 


2,000 



£15,910 £120,110 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 159' 

Some of these items may speak for themselves, but 
others will need some slight explanation. The sum 
of £6,750 charged under the head of Preparation of 
Papers, etc., for Examination is distributed among 
the following gentlemen, of whom the Examiners in 
Art are Sir F. Grant, E.A., Sir M. Digby Wyatt, 
C. W. Cope, E.A., R. Eedgrave, E.A., F. E. Pickers^ 
gill, E.A., H. Weekes, E.A., J. C. Horsley, E.A.,. 
F. Leighton, E.A., and J. Marshall, F.E.S., with 
assistants. In Science, the examination papers are 
prepared by Professors Tyndall, Frankland, Huxley, 
and Percy, with their able staff of assistants. 

The papers prepared by these high authorities are 
sent down into the country, and the pupils are examined 
them in presence of the committee, the teacher being 
rigorously excluded from the building, and by the 
result of these papers the pass degrees or honours, 
gold, silver, and bronze medals and other prizes, are 
awarded to the pupils, and the capitation fees assigned 
to the teachers. The sum which has been increased 
to £40,500 in the present estimates, and is put down 
as " Science," is entirely devoted to the payment of 
science teachers "by results." 

Few will cavil at the gross amount distributed 
among the science teachers of the country, especially 
when regard is had to the immense amount of work 
done for it. Capitation fees for successful pupils 



160 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

in the proportion of one, two, and four pounds per 
head, according to the degrees of efficiency exhibited 
under examination, may be satisfactory enough as 
■*' encouragement " to the teachers, but barely answer 
io the demand for sufficient remuneration for work 
■done. As a stimulant to exertion the premium on 
results is well enough without doubt, but it holds out 
a prize not always to the swift, nor even to the strong, 
but often to the lucky. In writing on scientific 
subjects it is always w^ell to eliminate the element of 
■chance, if possible ; but in the case of popular educa- 
tion it is not always possible to achieve this feat. 
Into scientific teaching chance enters largely. To 
begin with, the teacher may have dreary up-hill 
work. The district wherein he is called upon to 
lecture may be swayed by adverse influences. Noble 
pursuits, such as dog-fighting and nurr-and-spell, 
may hold out superior attractions to some, while 
cricket and skittles may deflect other pupils from 
the science class. Admitting that the absorbing 
influence of these truly British pastimes may be 
overcome, and a fair class attendance secured, the 
ieacher still has to contend with numerous disadvan- 
tages. His pupils may be below even the average 
level of stupidity. He may talk and he may experi- 
ment, but if the material of his class be thoroughly 
dense his labours may prove vain. Another difficulty 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ABT. 161 

arises from those indolent or balf-liearted students 
who, imagining that they have acquired the smatter- 
ing they deem necessarj^, shirk the examination, the 
results of which alone entitle their pastor and master 
to remuneration. 

Laziness and a childish fear of breaking down also 
help to deprive the master of his fair exhibit. Worse 
than all of these is a selfish indifferentism, which 
induces pupils to disregard the master's interests 
altogether so long as their own turn is served. 
Against all these adverse influences the Science teacher 
has to contend, and it therefore hardly seems fair to 
deny him all remuneration except by '^results." As 
a i3roof of the injustice that frequently occurs, I may 
cite the case of a Science teacher who took high 
honours, and who yet by the "result" system only 
received £7 for a course of sixty experimental lectures 
in his first year of teaching, since when — during the 
last four or five years — he has delivered ninety 
lectures per annum, and has earned from ^12 to ^26 
by each com-se. As this is by no means an isolated 
case, it would appear that the hard and fast Hne of 
payment "by results alone" may be advantageously 
departed from by granting teachers a small salary — 
say of 5OIO or ^12 per annum — as a species of 
guarantee against actual dead loss of time. The large 
range of subjects included in the advanced stage of 

M 



162 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

chemistry is also j)ointed out by the teachers as a 
si3ecial source of hardship. They declare that students 
are unable, within a reasonable time, to master the 
numerous obligatory subjects sufficiently well to face 
the examiner, and that therefore a vast amount of 
care and painstaking on the part of the master never 
has a chance of being recomj)ensed either by pence or 
praise. 

In order to set forth clearly what is at first sight 
not very distinct, I may say at once that the items 
previously enumerated include all that is done for 
Science by the Department as such, save and except 
the courses of instruction given for the express benefit 
of Science teachers. Art is taught directly to pupils 
at South Kensington, but Science is not — by the 
Department. There are laboratories at South Kensing- 
ton where pupils and " Science Teachers in Training" 
receive instruction, but these are more particularly 
devoted to the School of Mines. No Science, then, 
is directly taught by the Department (which only 
encourages others to teach), exce^^t to the teachers 
themselves. Lectures are given in summer by the 
professors of chemistry, physics, and other branches, 
with the express object of enabling country teachers to 
obtain a knowledge of the latest discoveries and newest 
experiments. These lectures were commenced in 
1869, were attended with great success, and have since 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND AET. 163 

l^ecome a regular part of the summer programme of 
the Department. It has been customary to afford 
such country teachers as have taught two years con- 
secutively, and passed not less than thirty students 
each year, second-class railway fare to London, and 
£3 towards then* expenses of living while there. 
For the future this arrangement will probably be modi- 
fied in order to enable a certain number of teachers 
to stay long enough in London to undergo a course 
of instruction in teaching certain special subjects. 
Should this scheme be carried out, such teachers 
will receive 305. per week instead of one payment 
of £S. 

Science teachers, then, enjoy the privilege of attend- 
ing these lectm-es on condition that they do their 
work thoroughly. They are required to make notes, 
to afterwards write out a complete report of each 
lecture, and also to take part in practical work. The 
reports are examined by the professors, and marks 
are awarded in accordance with the merit displayed. 
No less important is the practical teaching given in 
the laboratories, especially when it is recollected that 
the object of these courses is to enable teachers to 
give practical instruction in the several sciences. 
This plan has called into existence a system of tuition 
in practical science which has already borne good 
fruit. Students, instead of being confined to mere 



164 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

listening to lectures, are now taught to perform, and' 
to assist in performing, experiments with their own 
hands. This system has produced a promising crop 
of students, of whom about forty-five are at present 
prosecuting their more advanced studies in the labor- 
atories of the Eoyal School of Mines under the title 
of Science Teachers in Training. Time and space 
permit — for the present — the extension of this latter 
advantage to a limited number only, but it has been 
suggested that a most desirable improvement would 
be made by permitting such promising pupils as are 
in the habit of assisting their teachers in experiments 
to listen to the lectures at South Kensington. 

While at work in their own classes the teachers are 
subject to visits from the Government inspectors, 
selected for the most part from the officers of the 
Eoyal Engineers. There can be no doubt as to the 
conscientiousness with which these gentleman dis- 
charge their duties, but it is possible that the number 
of inspectors is not sufficiently large, inasmuch as I 
am imformed that certain classes — not of the most 
obscure order — escape inspection for years together. 
A Science teacher of some experience tells me that for- 
five years he was never once honoured with a visit of 
inspection, although his class is held at a well-known 
spot in the heart of London. Complaints of this kind 
indicate distinctly enough that the rank and file of 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 165 

4^cience teachers do not feel very well satisfied at 
being placed under the inspection of a body of gentle- 
men who, although possessed of high scientific attain- 
ments, have had comparatively slight experience of 
-actual teaching. Perhaps the teachers think that 
their future inspectors ought to be drawn from their 
own body — but this by the way. 

Pupils are encouraged by the offer of a large 
number of Exhibitions, Scholarships, Medals, and 
Prizes. Among these the Eoyal Exhibitions to the 
School of Mines, the Whitworth Scholarships, the 
Pioyal Exhibitions to the Eoyal College, Dublin, and 
the privileges conferred on the gainer of a gold medal 
at the May Examinsition are the most important, but 
these are supplemented by many local and conditional 
prizes and exhibitions, grants for laboratories, etc. 
The whole system is now in fair working order, and 
during the last fifteen years has produced results as 
important as they were unexpected. 

Having now sketched slightly the past and present 
of the famous Department of Science and Art, taken 
in its entirety, I may proceed to advert to those 
scientific institutions which combined with the Depart- 
ment of Practical Art to produce the vast network of 
Art and Science schools with which the country is 
rapidly becoming covered. It is true that the Eoyal 
College of Chemistry exists no longer as an actual 



166 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

coi'iDoration, but an account of scientific culture in 
England would, nevertheless, be incomplete without 
some notice of that institution. 

Travellers down Oxford Street will observe a build- 
ing now converted into a general Medical Council 
House, looking grimly enough at its neighbour, the 
Eoyal Orthopaedic Hospital. This establishment — 
albeit financially a failure — has left no slight mark 
on the history of science. It was once called the 
Eoyal College of Chemistry, and during its short 
span of existence saw much notable work ]Derformed 
within its walls. The college was first established by 
a public meeting held in St. Martin's Place, on the 
29th July, 1845. Form was given to the new insti- 
tution by the election of a council and the appoint- 
ment of certain executive officers. Eooms were next 
hired in George Street, Hanover Square, as labora- 
tories, but it was soon found necessary to secure a 
more convenient and permanent habitation. Ulti- 
mately premises in Hanover Square, with a frontage 
to Oxford Street, were secured, and the most eminent 
architects and chemists were consulted as to the 
formation of an economical and convenient edifice,, 
with the most efficient arrangements for the opera- 
tions of the laboratory. On the 16th of June, 1846,, 
the first stone of the building was laid by the late 
Prince Consort, the President of the college, who had 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 167 

already conferred immense benefit upon the college by 
persuading Dr. August Wilhelm Hofmann to preside 
oyer it. This celebrated chemist had commenced a 
brilliant career as assistant in the chemical laboratory 
of the University of Giessen. He subsequently held 
the appointment of Professor Extraordinary at the 
University of Bonn, but in 1845 forsook the banks of 
the Khine for those of the Thames, and became Pro- 
fessor of the Pioyal College of Chemistry in London. 

After filling this chair for several years. Dr. Hof- 
mann — pending whose possible retui-n Dr. Frankland 
accepted the post of provisional professor — was sum- 
moned to Germany to preside over the erection of 
new laboratories at Bonn and at Berlin, and was 
prevailed upon to remain in the Prussian capital — a 
resolution which it is dimly rumoured he has since 
had cause to regret. During his residence in London, 
Dr. Hofmann added greatly to his scientific reputation 
by carrying out his classical researches on ammonia 
— showing the successive replacement of hydrogen by 
various organic radicals — in the laboratory of the 
Eoyal College of Chemistry. He also, in conjunction 
with the eminent French chemist M. Cahours, dis- 
covered a remarkable series of phosphorus repre- 
sentatives of the compound ammonias. Meanwhile, 
a discovery of the utmost industrial importance was 
made in his laboratory. Perkin, in the course of 



168 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

some preliminary investigations into the possibility 
of producing artificial quinine, discovered the famous 
Perkin's mauve while oxidizing aniline with chromate 
of potash. This discovery brought its author into 
well-merited fame — albeit it was well known at the 
time — when mauve, if not discovered for the first time 
as a colour, was at least for the first time made 
commercially valuable — that the technical knowledge 
and enterprise of a dyer at the East end of London, 
who ably seconded the exertions of the chemist, con- 
tributed largely to the industrial value of these 
investigations. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was discovered, or 
thought, that successful philosophical investigation 
barely compensated for financial failure, and the 
Eoyal School of Chemistry became a doomed institu- 
tion; not destined, however, to absolute extinction, 
but rather to absorption, as tottering principalities 
are sucked into the vortex of neighbouring empires. 
Pure science was in this case destined to cede the 
place to technical education. Again, under the 
auspices of the late Prince Consort a new and 
vigorous organization had sprung into active life, 
and becoming in its vigorous growth too large for 
its own habitation, acquired that of the dwindlmg 
College of Chemistry as a sort of scientific chapel of 
ease. The council of the college, despairing of sue- 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 169 

cess, handed over the building, valued at ^3000, to 
the Government, on condition of a claim of some 
^500 being settled; and thus in 1853 the College of 
Chemistry became the laboratory of the Eoyal School 
of Mines, under the condition that it should retain 
its original designation. 

The origin of the School of Mines lies deep down in 
the primary strata of technical education, and was 
due, in the first place, to the enterprise of the late Sir 
Henry de la Beche, in undertaking single-handed the 
Geological Survey of the United Kingdom; and, in 
the second, to the English habit of adapting existing 
institutions to immediate wants. As is well known, 
the survey undertaken at first by Sir Henry de la 
Beche, at his own cost, underwent a gradual expan- 
sion, and, as the value of the work became apparent, 
received more and more support from the State. In 
1837 Lord Duncannon, Chief Commissioner of Woods 
and Forests, allotted apartments in Craig's Court to 
receive the collection which has since developed into 
the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street. 
In 1851, when the latter building was opened, the 
sm'vey had assumed imposing proportions. Its work- 
ing staff contained not only practical geologists and 
field-surveyors, but a naturalist, a mining surveyor, 
a mineralogist, a metallurgist, and a chemist. 

In the same year numerous memorials, praying for 



170 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the establishment of a mming school, were addressed 
to the Government. It was m-ged that — though the 
value of the annual mineral produce of this country 
amounted to £28,000,000, equalling four-ninths of the 
total amount produced by the whole of Europe, and 
far exceeding that yielded by any other State — "the 
miners and metallurgists of the United Kingdom were 
unable to obtain that instruction in the theory and 
the practice of their calling, which had long been 
carefully provided for their foreign comjpetitors in the 
mining colleges of France, Belgium, Prussia, Saxony, 
Austria, Spain, and Sweden, and the effect of which 
in all cases had been a marked increase in the 
economy, efficiency, and safety of mining operations.'* 
The voice of the representatives of the mining 
interest was raised at the right moment. Finding 
ripe and ready to hand the complete nucleus of a 
mining school in the officers, laboratories, and collec- 
tions of the Geological Survey, the Government lent 
a willing ear to the request of the memorialists. In 
1851 the School of Mines was instituted, all its pro- 
fessors being, with one exception, officers of the Survey 
and Museum. The existing establishment was further 
utilized. Students were taught in the theatres and 
laboratories appertaining to the Museum ; where, 
surrounded by specimens and models, they possessed 
every opportunity of profiting by the prescribed course 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 171 

of instruction. As has already been stated, the 
laboratories soon outgrew the resources of Jermyn 
Street and were transferred, firstly, to the Eoyal 
College of Chemistry, and, lastly, in 1872, to South 
Kensington. Certain parts of the work, however, are 
still done in Jermyn Street. Thus, while Messrs. 
Frankland, Huxley, Guthrie, and Goodeve — the 
lecturers on Chemistry, General Natural History, 
Physics, and Applied Mechanics — have transferred 
their habitat to South Kensington, Messrs. Wariiigton 
Smyth, Percy, and Ramsay — the lecturers on Mining 
and Mineralogy, Metallurgy, and Geology — still pursue 
their labom-s amid the illustratiye specimens with 
which the Museum of Practical Geology abounds. 
The School of Mines is governed b}' a Council of 
Professors, whose resolutions are carried into effect 
by the Registrar, Mr. Trenham Eeeks. To the 
lectm*es given by this institution the public are 
admitted on payment of three or fom* pounds, 
according to the length of the course, and are granted 
certificates of attendance, but students wishing for 
certificates of proficiency are compelled to pass the 
examinations. Those, however, who desire an official 
certificate constituting them Associates of the Eoyal 
School of Mines are required to follow^ a course of 
study extending over three years, and to pay a sum 
of thirty pounds on entrance, or to make two annual 



172 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

payments of twenty pounds each, exclusive of labora- 
tory fees. This plan of instruction, combining 
systematic courses of lectures, written and oral 
examinations, practical teaching in the laboratories 
and drawing office, and also — under certain conditions 
— field excursions, is of a thoroughly scientific and, 
wdthal, technical character, and is, perhaps, the best 
extant English representative of the admirable system 
of technical education in force in Germany, Switzer- 
land, and France. For the first two years a general 
training is insisted upon, but after the second year 
pupils may attach themselves to any one of the three 
divisions prescribed, and may take a first-class in 
only one of these divisions if preferred. This very 
rsound and practical plan of study commences m the 
first year with inorganic chemistry, with practice in 
the laboratory, and mechanical drawing. In the 
second year pupils are taught physics, with practice 
in the laboratory, applied mechanics with demonstra- 
tions, mechanical drawing and mineralogy. 

Having completed these courses, pupils may in the 
third year *'go out" in either of the three following 
divisions : — The Mining Division, comprising mining, 
assaying, and geology ; the Metallurgical Division, 
trained to metallurgy in the laboratory ; or the 
Geological Division, including natural history, with 
practice in the laboratory, geology, and palgeonto- 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 173^ 

logical demonstration. Altliougli the course of in- 
struction is spread over three years, persons may, if 
possessed of sufficient knowledge or industry, save 
time by getting through the whole and their examina- 
tion in a couple of years, while those who have already 
mastered the subjects set down for the fii'st two years 
may proceed to the courses of the third year by 
passing the final class examinations in those subjects. 
It is hardly necessary to say that those persons 
who desire the title of Associate are the peculiar pride 
and care of the Eoyal School of Mines. Among these 
are the Eoyal Exhibitioners. There are nine Eoyal 
Exhibitions to the School of Mines, of the value of 
.^50 each per annum. The holders are entitled ta 
*'free admission to all the lectm-es and the chemical 
and metallurgical laboratories " for three years, on 
condition of compliance with the rules, regular attend- 
ance, and the passing of the examinations required 
for the associateship. As a rule, three of these 
exhibitions become vacant every year, and are open 
for competition at the May examinations of the 
Science and Art Department, independently of the 
other prizes offered by that department. All persons 
over twenty-one years of age — excepting artisans and 
such persons as are paid upon under the " Science 
Directory," that is to say, broadly, persons whose 
income is under c£200 per annum— are excluded from 



174 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

competing for the Eoyal Exhibitions. It is pleasing 
to record that these exhibitions have produced really 
■good fruit. Many young men sprung from the true 
artisan class have won them well, and worn honour- 
ably the subsequently acquired title of Associate. 

Apart from the Eoyal Exhibitioners and persons 
desiring associateship, many others are offered strong 
inducements to pursue the course of study prescribed 
by the institution. Those who have taken either a 
first or second-class certificate in " the advanced stage 
in any subject in Science at the exhibition held by 
the Science and Art Department, and who show that 
they are bond fide Science teachers, may attend the 
day lectures gratuitously, provided that they be 
•examined in at least one subject, paying a fee for 
each examination of one pound per course." Officers 
of the Army and Navy, Her Majesty's consular and 
diplomatic officers, officers of the Crown at home on 
furlough, and acting mine agents and managers of 
mines are admitted to the lectures at half-price. 
Moreover, those who obtain a Queen's Gold Medal at 
the annual May examination of the Science and Art 
Department receive the privilege of attending all 
lectures and examinations free. Students of the 
Eoyal Schools of Mines compete for two scholarships 
of thirty pounds each, granted by H.E.H. the Prince 
<of Wales as Duke of Cornwall, and thence called the 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 175 

Cornwall Scholarships. Three Eoyal Scholarships, 
one of twenty-five pounds, and two of fifteen pounds 
each, are granted to students who stand highest on 
the list for first and second years of study. In addi- 
tion to these prizes are the Edward Forbes, the De 
la Beche, and the Murchison medals and prizes. 

In a thoroughly broad and cathohc spirit the 
lectures — instead of being confined to high-class 
students — are thrown open to the public on payment 
of the sums previously mentioned, and the chemical 
and metallurgical laboratories are open to any person, 
whether attending the lectures or not, on payment 
of the following fees : — In the chemical laboratory 
twelve pounds for three months, nine for two months, 
and five for one month; and in the metallurgical 
laboratory fifteen pounds for three months, twelve 
pounds for two months, and seven pounds for one 
month. 

Although the institution of a School of Mines was 
loudly enough called for nearly a quarter of a century 
ago, and since that date the inadequate sujDply of 
technical education in this country has been a favomite 
theme with educational reformers, the advantage of 
undergoing a special course of training with a view 
to acquiring the associateship of the Eoyal School of 
Mines — a distinction to which due regard is paid in 
allotting Government appointments — did not seem for 



176 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

nearly twenty years to attract the attention that it 
merited ; but during the last four years a notable 
increase has taken place in this as in other classes of 
students. Thus, in the session 1870-71 the number 
of ^'Eoyal Exhibitioners and Students entering for 
one, two, or three years, with a view to become 
Associates," was only 15. In 1873-74 a great advance 
was made ; 44 postulants for the degree of Associate 
having presented themselves. During the four years 
indicated a corresponding increase has taken place in 
the number of "students entering for special courses." 
In chemistry the number has arisen from 24 to 48, 
in physics from 15 to 40, in metallurgy from 4 to 14, 
and in applied mechanics from 5 to 14, and the fees 
X^aid by students rose from ^720 5s. in 1870-71 to 
£1,554: 16s. in 1873-74. These fees are for the most 
part distributed among the professors. The account 
for the past year has not been published, but I find 
that in 1872-73 the fees amounted to ^61137 3s. 4f?., 
of which the professors received £995 Os. Id., the 
balance of £142 3s. M. being paid into the Exchequer. 
It will at once be recognized that the additional 
income arising from fees is necessary to afford an}'- 
thing like adequate remuneration to the able pro- 
fessors engaged, whose fixed salary as " lectm^ers " is 
only £200 per annum, except in the cases of the 
chemist and the metallurgist, who receive £300 each, 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 177 

and in that of Professor Eamsay, who, in addition to 
the appointment of geological lecturer, holds the 
directorship of the Geological Survey of the United 
Kingdom, worth .£800 more. 

Those who wander down Exhibition Eoad become 
aware of a handsome red-brick building, and — on the 
principle of taking things upon trust — believe it to be 
the South Kensington Museum. No belief can be 
more unfounded, as this structure really contains the 
lecture-rooms and laboratories of four of the depart- 
ments of the School of Mines — chemistry, physiology, 
physics, and applied mechanics. On the several floors 
reign Professors Frankland, Huxley, Guthrie, and 
Goodeve. In a spacious theatre, admirably con- 
structed, lighted, and moreover shielded from the 
light by a skilful arrangement of blinds, and fitted 
with well-constructed desks, Professor Frankland 
delivers his lectures on chemistry. Ascending a few 
flights of stairs, I discover the large resources at the 
command of the chemical section. Here are labora- 
tories indeed. Piooms — many of them as yet far from 
sufficiently furnished — are set apart for the various 
departments of the chemical curriculum. Conspicu- 
ous among these are the " balance-rooms," for ele- 
mentary and advanced students, rooms specially fitted 
for gas and water analyses, for combustions, and other 
processes in advanced chemistry. Strolling through 



178 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

these apartments, under the care of that earnest pro- 
fessor, Mr. Valentin, who gives practical instruction 
in chemistry, I find in every room evidences of sus- 
tained industry. Students of gas analysis are busily 
engaged in marking off metrical tubes, while others 
more advanced are engaged in the finer niceties 
of the analysis itself. Nothing is more agreeable to 
the truly scientific mind than this insistence on actual 
work. A chemist, or for that matter a physicist — to 
be worth his salt — must be able to construct his own 
apparatus. In the active exercise of his profession he 
will often be compelled to make — out of simple glass 
tubing — an apparatus for grand combustions, includ- 
ing the famous five-bulb invention of Baron Liebig. 
In London he can buy these things, or — at a certain 
sacrifice of time — have them made ; but the genuine 
worker will save much time by making his apparatus 
himself, and besides this advantage will always get 
exactly what he wants. Passing next into a room 
devoted to distillation, I find myself in the midst of a 
busy scene. The professor pauses for a moment to 
observe that an indiarubber tube is not a proper part 
of an apparatus for distilling alcohol, and to recom- 
mend a glass tube deftly bent into the required curve, 
when we proceed into the laboratory for advanced 
students. This room is well fitted with quiet, silent 
workers, each at his table busily engaged in working 



THE DEPABTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 179 

out the higher problems of chemistry. One young 
gentleman is evolving chlorine in a fashion easily dis- 
tinguishable by the nostrils, and comes in for a few 
remarks from his pastor and master, who devotes a 
few minutes to the removal of a cloud from the mind 
of that painstaking but unlucky student. From the 
advanced school I pass into the laboratory for young 
scholars, and am not a little surprised at the extreme 
youth of many of the occupants. Every place is 
occupied, and every youth, and a few no longer youths, 
are busily engaged. Clearly, good honest work is 
being done here, and on a system, the invention of 
which is, I believe, due to Mr. Valentin himself. The 
students are armed with his excellent books, and are 
working patiently through them. Not only is their 
work carefully checked by the professor and his two 
assistants, but the scholars are literally brought to 
book by an admirably arranged series of questions at 
the end of each chapter. This precaution is highly 
necessary, inasmuch as a scholar may blunder — by 
good luck and deft manipulation — through an experi- 
ment without thoroughly understanding and grasping 
its rationale. The plan of cross-questioning effectually 
disposes of this difficulty. No youth can possibly 
perform an experiment and stand the subsequent 
cross-examination unless he thoroughly comprehends 
what has been done. The students are working well. 



180 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Those who have not enjoyed the advantage of a 
previous course of lectures are jDut through a proper 
course of elementary experiments, and as soon as they 
have exhibited tolerable proficiency in *' qualitative," 
are at once indulged in the more attractive " quantita- 
tive " analysis. Professor Valentin is not dissatisfied 
with his disciples, and is not inclined to include want 
of earnestness and energy among the defects of Young 
England. Germans are perhaps more anxious and 
imaginative by fits and starts, but English youth 
make up for the want of those qualities by their 
faculty of sustained exertion. 

In the physical school Professor Guthrie is de- 
livering a lecture on Electricity to a large class 
of students. This peculiar section is supplied with a 
perfect arsenal of appliances for performing experi- 
ments, many of them of the most costly kind. In 
this respect Professor Guthrie has enjoyed a certain 
advantage in being enabled to remove the splendid 
apparatus, accumulated during a series of years at 
the School of Mines, to South Kensington. Professor 
Goodeve's department (applied mechanics) is hardly 
so well off. The lecture-room is yet in the crude 
condition which, in the case of the chemical labora- 
tories, called forth some time since a strong remon- 
strance from Dr. Frankland. To my great sorrow I 
find that the physiological course of Professor Huxley 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 181 

IS over for this season ; but although the students 
have sought other, if not fresher, woods and pastures 
new, the professor himself is discovered hard at work 
on some anatomical drawings. He is busy, but not 
too busy to deliver for the express benefit of Major 
Donnelly — the Government Inspector of the Science 
Department — and the writer, his views on '' thorough " 
scientific teaching. Professor Huxley loves to make 
his students begin at the beginning. A thorough 
believer in human ignorance and stupidity, he takes 
utter and complete ignorance for granted. 

Nothing can possibly be more agreeable for the 
student, who is not asked to know anything, but is 
simply required to pay attention to what is set before 
him. The system of teaching initiated by Professor 
Huxley is purely and simply after the manner of 
Euclid. No attempt is made to build an airy and 
showy superstructure upon a rickety and insecure 
foundation. Bit by bit, brick by brick, the edifice of 
2^hysiological knowledge must be reared; and the 
student is not exhorted but compelled to lay each 
successive row of bricks for himself. *'My system," 
saith the professor, "is very much that of Mr. Whack- 
ford Squeers — w-i-n-d-e-r — winder — go and clean it." 
Students are lectured and told about a thing, and 
then are at once set to dissect and prepare the 
specimen for themselves. Even then they prefer a 



182 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

formula, or a drawing to copy from, if they can find' 
it in their memory ; but Professor Huxley will have 
none of this. What he demands, and insists upon, is 
that they shall acquire a clear and distinct idea of 
"things," not a confused jumble of "hard words." 
The application of this positive mode of teaching — 
long since practised in chemistry — is in physiology 
due to Professor Huxley. Mere listening to lectures 
and taking of notes will never produce any true 
scientific knowledge. Students must learn to make 
the experiment. Carefully and painstakingly they — 
after the master has shown them the book — must 
turn over the leaves, and reveal, to their own vast 
improvement, the secrets of nature. 

Professor Huxley's views on the admission of female 
students to the" physiological course are sufficiently 
catholic. The example of Miss McConnish, who has 
become an accomplished demonstratrix in physiology, 
inspires the professor with a certain faith in the clear- 
ness and positivity of the female intellect. The great 
drawback to the instruction of ladies in the more 
recondite mysteries of physiology is found in the 
difficulty of lecturing to a mixed class of young; 
persons of both sexes. It is no more difficult to 
lecture to a female than to a male class, but the 
objections to a mixed auditory will suggest themselves- 
to all persons of ordinary refinement. 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND AET. 183 

The physiological department is enriched by many 
beautiful specimens, and illustrated by a series of 
fossils culled from the immense repository at the 
Geological Museum in Jermyn Street, and moreover 
possesses the advantage of affording a view over the 
domain of South Kensington. The new Museum 
of Natural History is rising above its foundations, 
and from its ground plan appears Hkely to afford 
ample room for the specimens now crowded together 
in the British Museum. This latter institution must, 
as it appears, undergo a gradual process of disintegra- 
tion. At the present moment it is a vast omnium 
gatherum of incongruous atoms. A collection com- 
menced, probably enough, with an Indian god and a 
stuffed crocodile, has developed into a vast hetero- 
geneous museum. Books and stuffed giraffes, ele- 
phants and rhinoceroses, Assyrian bricks, the Elgin 
marbles, Egyptian papyri, and a mineralogical 
collection, hardly " hang together," and it is comfort- 
ing to find that at least one section will find its way 
to South Kensington. 

One of the most interesting features of the School 
of Mines is found in the Lectures to Working Men. 
The institution of these lectures is due to the en- 
lightened foresight of the Minister under whose 
instructions the school was founded, and who stipu- 
lated expressly that the professors should deliver 



184 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

annually, at a nominal admission fee, a course of 
lectures to working men. It was considered — and 
very properly considered — that an institution subsi- 
dized by the nation for the express object of affording 
a certain class of technical education, should con- 
tribute to a certain extent towards the great "national 
object of educating those who are prevented by 
circumstances from educating themselves." These 
lectures were commenced in 1851, and immediately 
attracted so large an attendance, and excited so much 
interest among the class for whose benefit they were 
instituted, that in the following year the officers of the 
School determined to increase their labours in this 
direction. The arrangement then made has continued 
in force ever since. Each professor gives a course of 
six lectures in alternate years, thus providing working- 
men with an average of twenty-four instead of six 
lectures in each year. 

The fee paid by the artisan is truly nominal. It is 
simply a registration fee of sixpence for each course 
of six lectures, giving the working man an opportunity 
of hearing science of the highest and most recent 
order discoursed upon in the very plainest English 
that the subject will admit of, by professors of the 
first rank, at the rate of one penny per lecture. A 
certain evening is announced for the distribution of 
tickets between the hours of seven and ten p.m. 



THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART. 185 

Each applicant is required to bring his name, address, 
and occupation, written on a piece of paper, in return 
for which, and the sum of sixpence of the lawful 
money of the realm, he receives his ticket of admis- 
sion to the particular course given. If any proof were 
needed of the avidity with which scientific information 
is coveted by the artisan, the rush for tickets on one of 
those evenings would amply supply it. Only six hun- 
dred tickets are or can be issued, the lecture theatre 
not affording accommodation for a greater number. 
The whole of these, and many more, are applied for on 
the evening prescribed ; no chance exists of getting a 
ticket after that date, on which many a time and oft 
large numbers of applicants are sent empty away. 

During the late session three courses of these 
lectures have been delivered. The first on Heat, by 
Professor Guthrie; the second on Metals, by Dr. 
Percy; and the third on Natural History, or rather 
*' On the Phenomena of Life as Motion and Conscious- 
ness," by Professor Huxley. Feeling anxious to hear 
how Dr. Huxley will make the complex phenomena of 
nerve action clear to his auditors, I wend my way to 
Jermyn Street on one of those charming spring 
evenings, when a pleasant admixture of rain and hail 
makes existence delicious, and compels the traveller 
to warm himself with the reflection that, albeit he is 
wet and cold, he yet is an Englishman ; that he loves 



186 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the "Wild North -Easter," as Mr. Kingsley has in- 
structed him to do ; and that in the pursuit of Science 
he can afford to disregard chmatic asperities, which 
matter Httle except to inferior beings. It wants 
twenty minutes to the appointed hour, and the happy 
possessors of tickets are arriving in great strength. 
The theatre is abeady nearly full, but the benches 
appear to possess a certain elastic property, and every 
corner is occupied. Having, probably, more to do- 
than the fashionables at the Eoyal Institution, the 
working men do not arrive an entire hour before the 
time in order to secure the best seats, but the theatre 
is completely filled long before the clock strikes. I 
look around me at the audience, and I am content. 
He is here, this working man, whom I have so often 
sought and found not. His place is not usurped by 
smug clerks or dandy shopmen. In all his various 
forms and ages, from the keen-eyed apprentice to the 
experienced artisan, he is here — in force — this handi- 
craftsman — this maker of things. 

It is a silent audience. These men are evidently 
fresh from the workshop, striving to overcome the 
obliterating influences of a week of humdrum every- 
day occupation, and are burnishing up their memories 
touching the last lecture — not a few aiding these 
organs by note books. There is no well-bred high- 
toned chatter going on. Perhaps the silence is due to 



THE DEPAKTMENT OP SCIENCE AND ART. 187 

the absence of Angot caps and red opera cloaks and 
perhaps to the earnestness of the audience. Be this 
as it may — as the hands of the clock turn towards 
eight there is no perceptible rustling, hushing, and 
settling down. The silence simply becomes, if possible, 
a degree more profound than before. A burst of 
applause welcomes the professor, who has undertaken 
to explain, on this particular evening, '^ The Co- 
ordination of the Modes of Motion of Living Bodies 
Avith those of the Surrounding World." This title 
has, in truth, a tough look, but when manipulated by 
Professor Huxley proves eminently digestible. With 
admirable lucidity, and with an utter absence of 
"hard words," the lecturer proceeds to discourse upon 
the action of the nerve forces — as a distinct pheno- 
menon from sensation or consciousness. Confining 
his remarks mainly to involuntary or — according to 
the more explicit terminology of Professor Huxley — 
reflex action, the lecturer dilates upon those mechani- 
cal movements of the body — such as sudden contrac- 
tion — which are produced at once by the contact of 
external objects without any exercise of volition on 
the part of the patient. Clear, precise, and distinct 
in his description of nerve mechanics, the professor 
reserves a rare sensation as a honne louche. Aided by 
his profound studies in palaeontology and embryology, 
he plunges, when discoursing of the eye, into those 



188 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

remote periods when eyes and vertebrae as yet were not, 
and Nature had only unfolded the first few leaves of 
her wondrous volume. During this description of the 
gradual evolution of the eye out of an infolded portion 
of the epidermis, by some such process of mutation as 
that which is held to have produced the rudiment of a 
spinal column, the attention of the audience is intense. 
Adroitly concluding a lecture of absorbing interest 
with this astounding bit of speculative philosophy, 
Professor Huxley dismisses his audience before giving 
them time to recover breath. A few stroll about the 
Geological Museum, lighted up for the occasion, but 
the larger number, including the writer, march home- 
wards, thoroughly charmed with a lecture which has 
given them something to weigh and think over in their 
leisure moments. 



( 189 ) 



VII. 
THE LONDON INSTITUTION. 

To the present generation of Londoners few loealities^^ 
are less known than Finsbury Circus. Only a few 
short years ago, Finsbury altogether was very much a 
terra incognita. The existence of a square was dimly 
hinted at by foreign professors, who were supposed to 
affect that tranquil spot for residential purposes ; the 
Circus was laid down in maps of the metropolis, but 
was seldom reached except by the festive members of 
the Honourable Artillery Company — whose stronghold 
is not far off — and a market where nobody ever went, 
and where nothing was ever bought or sold, enjoyed a 
place on the list of metropolitan commercial centres ; 
but the entire district maintained but a dim and 
shadowy entity. Travellers into this silent region 
found their movements somewhat facilitated by the 
opening of the Metropolitan Eailway, and easily 
attained thereby a point of departure for their wander- 



190 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

ings, but the Moorgate Street Station has failed to 
infuse any vitality into the mysterious neighbourhood 
over the way. The main use of Finsbury has been to 
show to the adventurous spirits who penetrate into 
its recesses that there can be a duller place than 
Bloomsbury, • and that the square of that ilk is the 
abode of bustling life and boisterous mirth, when 
contrasted with the dismal region of Finsbury. 

Far away in the dim recesses of this sleeping — if 
not utterly dead and buried — city, on the dismallest 
side of the dismal Circus, is a huge building, founded 
for the best of all purposes, and called the London 
Institution. The gloom which weighs over the entire 
district sits heavily on this grim structure. Persons 
of a ribald turn of mind have long expressed a wish 
ihat a line of railway would carry away the entire 
affair, and lift it at once into the superior stratum of 
dead and gone institutions. Other irreverent beings 
have taken a fiendish delight in circulating reports 
of the existence of an enormous fungus destined at 
some period to lift the house up from its foundations. 
Nevertheless it looks solid enough and serious enough, 
.and altogether a most unhkely building to perform 
any act of a saltatory nature. 

Although the ceremony of laying the first stone 
of the London Institution was not performed until 
November 4th, 1815, on which occasion the speaker 



THE LONDON INSTITUTION. 191 

■of the inaugural oration expressed a hope that the 
Gresham lectures — an equally lively institution — 
might find a home within its walls — it had been 
practically founded at a much earlier date. On 
October 17, 1805, a general meeting of proprietors was 
held, and laws and bye-laws agreed upon. In 1807 
it was fm'ther consolidated by a Eoyal Charter of 
Incorporation. The number of proj^rietors was 
limited to one thousand, and the qualification of a 
proprietor was fixed at one hundred guineas — a 
privilege that at this moment may be secured by 
transfer for about one-tenth of that sum, and an 
annual payment of £2 due at Midsummer. In the 
year 1806 the groundwork of the library was laid 
by large purchases at the sale of the library of the 
Marquis of Lansdowne. Among the chief proprie- 
tors at this period were the late Sir Francis Baring, 
John Julius Angerstein — the collector of what is now 
the National Gallery — George Hibbert, and Eichard 
Sharp. Nearly aG80,000 had already been collected, 
and, pending the erection of the present building, 
the mansion erected by Sir Thomas Clayton in 
1671 was first taken; but in 1811 the library was 
removed to King's Arms Yard, and a few years later to 
the present building. Few English libraries possess 
a finer collection of the historical and topographical 
literature of England than the London Institution 



192 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Foreign and general history are also amply supplied^ 
and voyages and travels occupy a considerable space. 
Theology, law, and medicine are less fully represented,, 
but in the mathematical sciences the library is very 
well furnished. A library over which Porson presided, 
if only for a brief period, should not be wanting in 
classics, and the London Institution possesses a noble 
series both in texts and in translations. Among 
the purchases and presents made to this collection 
are many of those choice specimens of early printing, 
which appeal more to the mere bibliograph than to 
the actual student. Here are the productions of 
Antonio Verard, the Wechels, the Stephani, the Aldi, 
the Sessi, and the Giunti, in addition to many choice 
specimens of early English printing. Great store is 
set by an " Orosius " without date or place of imprint, 
a complete series of folio Shakespeares, and a curious 
Chinese block book, entitled *' Liber organicus Astro- 
nomia3 Europseae apud Sinas restitutae," printed at 
Pekin in 1668. A collection of Spanish laws is highly 
prized from the use to which this copy was turned on 
the trial of Sir Thomas Picton for putting Luisa 
Calderon to the torture during his Governorship of 
Trinidad. 

Between 1806 and 1812 the sum of £16,533 was 
expended on this library, and numerous additions have 
since been made. The reign of Eichard Porson, from 



THE LONDON INSTITUTION. 193 

1806 to 1808, though short, was not uneventful. 
Brilliant scholars are not invariably the best possible 
librarians, and it is recorded by Mr. Maltby, his 
successor, that the great Grecian received on one 
occasion a decided "wigging" from the Directors. 
The censure was conveyed in these very pointed terms, 
"We only know you are our librarian by seeing your 
name attached to the receipts for your salary." This 
\dgorous reproof may, perhaps, have been merited, 
but certainly did not kill Porson, whose hide was 
proof against trifles of this kind. 

The present number of volumes exceeds 62,000. 
The right of admission belongs exclusively to the pro- 
prietors. Each of these is provided with a trans- 
ferable medal and card, thanks to which custom the 
few readers in the library present a juvenile appear- 
ance, which inclines the casual spectator to think that 
papa, being busy himself, has sent the boys round. 
Meanwhile the library, mainly on account of the 
difficulty of finding out proprietors, and the trouble 
of obtaining admittance, is practically abandoned by 
scholars, who far prefer the facilities afforded by the 
British Museum and the City Library at Guildhall. 
Originally founded to maintain, in what was once a 
central position, an extensive general library of refer- 
ence, comprising works of intrinsic value and utility 
in all languages, reading-rooms for periodical pubHca- 



194 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

tions, daily papers, and interesting contemporaneous 
pamphlets, and to promote the diffusion of knowledge 
by lecture and conversazioni, the London Institution 
started into life with objects sufficiently ambitious. 
But in addition to the fixed general library, a circu- 
lating library has been formed or the proprietors by 
subscriptions paid to Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son, 
and Eolandi's foreign library. This permanent circu- 
lating library has assumed proportions possibly un- 
dreamt of by its founders, inasmuch as it has eclipsed 
its rivals, the permanent library and the lectures, 
which latter — albeit occasionally delivered by men of 
celebrity in the world of science — have shrunk to very 
narrow proportions. Only two lectures are delivered 
per week — one at four p.m. on Mondays, and one at 
seven p.m. on Wednesdays. 

In the synopsis for the past season, the two 
professors regularly attached to the institution — 
Professor Bentley (Botany) and Professor Armstrong 
(Chemistry) — were only down for two short courses of 
lectures. Professor Armstrong delivered a so-caUed 
Holiday Course on Oxygen and Carbon during the 
Christmas holidays, and then disappeared from the 
synopsis, while Professor Bentley's name was only 
down for half a dozen lectures on Elementary Botany. 
It is much to be regretted that the energies of Professor 
Armstrong should be confined to a few school-boy 



THE LONDON INSTITUTION. 195 

entertainments at Christmas-tide, and that Professor 
Bentley should be compelled to limit his efforts to six 
lectures on Elementary Botany. Poignancy is added 
to this reflection by the recollection that the London 
Institution has — as at present — often secured the 
services of distinguished scientific men as permanent 
professors. In the case of the chemistry lectures I 
need only mention the names of Professors Grove 
and Wanklyn to prove my position ; but perhaps the 
reason for a paucity of lectures of a really practical 
educational character is that the remuneration given 
to the regular lecturers is very inadequate. At one 
time the chemical lecturer received fifty guineas per 
annum, supplemented by a like amount for expenses 
incurred in the laboratory and for experiments, but I 
hear with regret that the supplementary allowance 
has since been withdrawn, and that the chemical 
lectures, to which Dr. Armstrong could do ample 
justice, have been curtailed in consequence of this 
reduction. It is always depressing to find direct 
teaching set aside in favour of lectures on Art and 
Poetry, which, however agreeable and entertaining in 
the hands of Professors Zerffi and Morley, hardly 
supply the place of positive instruction. Art and 
Poetry are delightful subjects to talk about, WTite 
about, and listen to, but it is difficult to see how any 
human being could learn — by listening to any con- 



196 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

ceivable number of lectures — how to draw a figure 
from the sohd, or how to write a smooth couplet. 
Music, poetry, and drawing are no more to be 
acquired by listening to lectures than the mystery of 
tight-rope dancing is to be learned by witnessing a 
performance of the accomplished Monsieur Blondin.. 
My humble remarks on this question by no means 
apply to the more positive sciences, such as geometry^ 
astronomy, geology, palseontolgy, and chemistry, all 
of which, especially the last-named, can — granted the 
faculty of lucid exposition on the part of the lecturer,, 
and severe attention on the part of the student — be 
acquired to a very considerable extent by a rigid 
attendance at lectures, and, indeed, cannot be per- 
fectly studied without the demonstration of a pro- 
fessor, while lectures on the three subjects previously 
mentioned can only be designated as "pleasant talk,"" 
conveying very little, if any, positive instruction to 
audience. Many philosophers incline to the view that 
there is in these latter days too much of this general 
talk, and, judging from what I witnessed at a lecture 
on the Development of Civilization, delivered one 
Monday afternoon by Dr. Tylor, I am inclined — 
until better instructed — to agree with the philosophers 
aforesaid. 

The lecture theatre — spacious enough, but pervaded 
with a singularly earthy smell, as of a newly-opened 



THE LONDON INSTITUTION. 197 

vault — was occupied on the Monday afternoon in 
question by a miscellaneous crowd, wherein ladies of 
a tender age and small boys largely predominated. 
The lecture originally set down for the day, on 
''Magnetism and Current Electricity," had, possibly 
from causes beyond control, fallen through, and Dr. 
Tylor had obhgingly filled up the gap with a discourse 
on the ''Development of Civilization" — an exhila- 
rating subject, but falling, unhappily, under the pre- 
viously quoted designation of "talk about things." 
The lecturer held forth ably enough, and was at 
times, especially w^hen he dwelt upon the influence 
of female opinion on savage communities — somewhat 
too noisily applauded. 

He displayed considerable skill in the evolution of 
his theory of ''animism," or the natural predilection 
of the savage to invest rivers,- storms, stocks, and 
stones with a demoniac individuality, and at times 
made me tremble lest he should be induced to push 
his theory to the extreme limits which would, under 
similar ch'cumstances, have been infallibly reached by 
my friend Professor Hohensziel, of the University of 
Ausbruch. The lecturer, however, kept on tolerably 
safe ground, albeit he startled his audience by main- 
iaining that in rascality and general villainy the 
savage w^as not so far in advance of his civilized 
brother as is often imagined. All this was vastly 



198 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

entertaining and cheering to the souls of those who* 
believe that depravity is not a very variable quantity^ 
and that the ancient highwayman's place is now 
amply filled by the modern forger. But it was strong 
meat for babes. Not that in saying this do I intend 
to impute any fault to Dr. Tylor. Far from it. If 
the management of the London Institution choose 
to admit what I am afraid I must call " a parcel of 
children" to lectures supposed to interest mature, or 
nearly mature, human beings, no fault can be laid 
at the door of the lecturer. If, however, that learned 
gentleman — who is full of ideas — had chosen to write 
out his lecture fairly before reading it, I should have 
been happier, inasmuch as I should have been spared 
the pain of hearing him strive painfully to weave 
his notes into coherent and concatenated sentences^ 
Nevertheless, the lecturer exhibited great research and 
a judicious choice of illustrations, coupled with a 
power of generalization which compelled me to regret 
that it had not been my good fortune to hear his dis- 
course in the finished form of a concio ad clerum.. 

Unfortunately it is difficult to resist the conclusion 
that, in lectures of a presumedly popular kind, the 
high priest is, either from a desire to court j)0]3ularity 
or from a good-natured contempt for his audience, but 
too often inclined to talk down to their level, and 
thereby produce in many listeners the conviction that 



THE LONDON INSTITUTION. 199 

a good thing has been marred by an ineffectual 
endeavour to adapt it to the assumed mental capacity 
— or incapacity — of the listener. I am irresistibly 
impelled to lift up my voice and cry, " In heaven's 
name let us have one thing or the other." On the 
one hand, let us have lectures purely educational, 
which, beginning from first principles, teach the 
young idea to seize upon elementary truths, to grasp 
them firmly, and to advance by degrees to an accurate 
conception of great problems or great ascertained facts. 
On the other hand, let us now and then, at least, hear 
a lecture which takes a certain amount of knowledge 
for granted, and tells the already educated men and 
women of the world something they want to know, 
without descending to minute particulars, small jokes, 
or homely illustrations. With a few great exceptions 
the style of lecturing now in vogue is abominable. It 
is neither one thing nor the other, and lecturers, in 
the vain endeavour to arrest the attention of un- 
educated persons, stoop to meretricious arts which 
weary when they do not irritate those among their 
audience who, on other subjects, are as weU instructed 
as themselves. 

Truth to teU, I leave the London Institution a prey 
to a feeling of depression. The huge lectm-e theatre 
half fuU of women and children, and the rich library 
barren of scholars, and only invaded by boys coming 



200 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

to change novels at the circulating department, afflict 
me with sore reflections on the yanity of many human, 
and especially London, institutions. What is the 
outcome of eighty thousand pounds ? A gloomy 
building, a couple of underpaid professors, and a like 
number of sub -librarians overworked in changing 
books for children, a few *' popular" lectures, a 
squadron of discontented shareholders, and an auto- 
cratic hall-porter. 



( 201 ) 



VIII. 

THE BIEKBECK INSTITUTE. 

In the mysterious locality known as "round the 
corner," the Birkbeck Institution enjoys a vigorous 
existence. Shrinking back from the rush and roar of 
Holborn into the quietest nook of Southampton Build- 
ings, this busy hive of Hterary and scientific bees is 
hardly so well known by its new title as under its 
original designation of the London Mechanics' Institu- 
tion. This, the parent of many hundreds of similar 
institutions scattered over the whole length and breadth 
of the country, owed its foundation mainly to the 
public spirit and Hberality of the distinguished scien- 
tific man whose name it now bears, and in whose 
mind the idea of founding an institution for the in- 
struction of artisans was developed by the following 
events. During his residence in Glasgow, about the 
commencement of the present century. Dr. George 
Birkbeck, needing various scientific instruments and 



202 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

apparatus for the lectures he was delivermg at the 
Andersonian University, found himself embarrassed 
by the impossibility of finding in Glasgow any com- 
petent person to whom he could entrust the work» 
Nothing daunted, Dr. Birkbeck determined to attend 
the different worksho]3s himself, and to personally 
direct the construction of the apparatus he required. 
Greatly impressed by the intelligence displayed by the 
artisans with whom he was thus brought into contact, 
and interested by their constant inquiries for the 
reason of various steps in the work, he became con- 
vinced of the absolute necessity for affording scientific 
instruction to skilled workmen, and therefore resolved 
to commence a course of gratuitous lectures, and to 
form sj)ecial classes for instructing the artisans of 
Glasgow in the various branches of Natural Philo- 
sophy. The first lecture was delivered to an audience 
of seventy-five, the second was attended by nearly two 
hundred, the third by three hundred, while at the 
fourth five hundred artisans availed themselves of the 
opportunity of obtaining instruction calculated to 
assist them in their daily employment. So sudden 
and eager was the appreciation by the Glasgow work- 
men of the value of the teaching generously offered to 
them that it became necessary to restrict the issue of 
tickets, and so satisfied was Dr. Birkbeck with the 
success of his experiment that he continued to give 



THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTE. 203-^ 

these lectures for several years, until his removal to 
London. 

On settling in the metropoHs Dr. Birkbeck, although 
actively engaged in his profession, entered heartily 
into a scheme for the erection of an institution which, 
by lectures, classes, a reading-room, and a library, 
should spread literary, scientific, and artistic instruc- 
tion among the artisans of London. At the present 
day, when education is more talked about than any- 
thing else, a movement of this kind would appear 
simple and natural enough ; but it must be recollected 
that these events occurred more than fifty years ago, 
and that too much honour cannot be rendered to him 
who was the heart and soul of the first great effort in 
this country to extend to artisans the benefit of that 
higher education which, until then, had been restricted 
to the more wealthy classes. 

Public meetings were called on the 11th November 
and on the 2nd December, 1823, and several hmidreds 
enrolled their names as members of the proposed 
institution. Dr. Birkbeck was unanimously chosen 
president, and continued to hold that post till his 
decease on the 2nd December, 1841, on the eighteenth 
anniversary of the establishment of the Institution. 
By the death of its revered president and founder the 
London Mechanics' Institution suffered a loss which 
at the time was felt to be irreparable. His unvarying. 



204 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

kindness to the members and his great interest in 
their welfare had endeared him to their memory, 
and their gratitude for his noble work is to be seen 
in the handsome medallion by the late Mr. Foley, 
which surmounts the platform of the lecture theatre. 
The public appreciation of the labours of Dr. Birk- 
beck was shown by the foundation by public sub- 
scription of the ^'Birkbeck Laboratory" at University 
College. On the death of the founder the office of 
president was by the unanimous wish of the members 
bestowed on his son, Mr. W. Lloyd Birkbeck, who has 
^ver since rivalled his distinguished father in devotion 
to the interests of the Institution. 

In his great work Dr. Birkbeck was zealously 
supported by the late Duke of Sussex, the Duke of 
Bedford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Althorp, 
Lord Brougham, Su- Francis Burdett, and many 
other noblemen and gentlemen distinguished for their 
scientific and literary attainments. The late Lord — 
then Mr. Henry — Brougham, took especial interest in 
the institution, and, amid his multifarious occupations, 
found time to put in a frequent appearance at the 
lectures, setting a valuable example to others by his 
own deep attention. Launched under favourable 
auspices, the institution was not only a success in 
itself, but formed a model for all similar establish- 
ments. Temples of science sprang up all over the 



THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTE. 205' 

country, until at the present moment there is hardly 
a town of any importance in the United Kingdom 
which is not possessed of its literary or mechanics^ 
institution. The colonies also have followed the 
example of the mother country by founding hundreds 
of organizations modelled upon the parent institution 
in Southampton Buildings. 

The work achieved by the London Mechanics' 
Institution has been neither slight nor insignificant ► 
During the forty-nine years following its foundation,, 
fifty thousand persons availed themselves of its advan- 
tages, and many of these have found the education 
received under these circumstances the stepping-stone 
to distinguished position. Every branch of art, 
science, and literature has been recruited from 
students trained at Southampton Buildings, and 
owing to the valuable aid afforded by the examina- 
tions of the Society of Arts and of the Science and 
Ai-t Department, the practical and immediate value 
of the instruction afforded has been greatly in- 
creased. During an existence extending over half 
a century there have been times when the success of 
the Institution was less conspicuous than at others,, 
but since the recent impetus given to education and 
the application to the Institution of the name of its 
founder, a great advance has been made. Tho 
number of students exceeds two thousand seven hun- 



'206 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

dred, a result to which the unremitting labour of Mr. 
George M. Norris, the manager and honorary secre- 
tary of the Educational Council, has contributed in no 
slight degree. 

This Educational Council is a noteworthy body, in- 
asmuch as it presides over and directly manages the 
educational working of the Institution. Composed 
13artly of well-known and practical sympathizers with 
working-class education, and partly of teachers in the 
Institution, who necessarily have a deep insight into 
the needs and feelings of the students, the Council is 
Tieenly aware of the wants and aspirations of the 
great body of members. A feeling is also growing 
that, so far as is possible, teachers and members 
of the Council should be drawn from the ranks of 
successful scholars, with a view of knitting together 
still more closely those kindly relations which should 
always exist between teachers and pupils. 

The terms on which instruction is imparted are 
exceedingly moderate. An annual subscription of 
eighteen shillings, dating from the day of payment, 
secures a free admission to the weekly lectures, enter- 
tainments, and reading-room, and the free use of a 
library of 7000 volumes. Another privilege conferred 
by membership is admission to special classes at about 
half the price charged to the general public. For 
instance, French is charged 5s, per term to the general 



THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTE. 207 

public, and 3s. to members; and experimental physics, 
7s. 6cl. to the public, and 3s. to members. For like 
infinitesimal sums instruction may be had in about 
fifty subjects, "to enumerate ^Yhich would," as the old 
saw hath it, "be long." Suffice it to say that teaching 
may be had in mathematics, including geometry 
(plane and solid), trigonometry (plane and spherical), 
the differential and integral calculus, the calculus of 
finite differences, actuarial computations, navigation, 
and geometrical conies ; and in applied and theo- 
retical mechanics — by members for nothing — and by 
the public for 3s. per session, it having been wisely con- 
cluded that instruction in these positive branches of 
knowledge should be granted on the lowest possible 
terms. 

A perusal of the last report of the Educational 
Council is highly interesting as affording an index of 
the comparative popularity of the numerous classes 
now in actual work. An inspection of this document 
leads to the conclusion that the muscular young 
gentleman once depicted in Punch, in the act of observ- 
ing to a delicate-looking child, "I can't j)lay the piano, 
and I can't speak French; but I can punch your 
head," was very much behind the spirit of the age. 
No less than 450 students attended the French classes, 
while 727 joined the various music and singing classes. 
As an attractive language, German comes next to 



208 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Frencli, with 177 students ; Latin follows magno inter- 
vallo ; after which come Spanish, Italian, and Greek 
in the order named. The English language, literature, 
grammar, and composition secure hut 205 names, 
while elocution draws 124. The mathematical and 
arithmetical classes are well attended, as are also the 
classes for experimental physics, chemistiy, and 
mechanics. Geometrical, model, and ornamental 
drawing, perspective, building and machine construc- 
tion, figure and landscape drawing, are popular 
subjects ; as are also shorthand, writing, and 
physiology. It is, perhaps, a little disappointing to 
find the number of students of ''fancy" subjects 
exceed so largely that of those pursuing the severer 
branches of knowledge ; but it must not be forgotten 
that lady scholars are admitted to the Birkbeck 
Institution, and that the demand for musical instruc- 
tion is in a considerable degree referrible to this fact. 
Moreover, a certain amount of consolation may be 
found in the numbers attending the French and 
German classes. In no department of knowledge 
have Englishmen hitherto been so deficient as in 
modern languages. Many middle-aged Englishmen 
find it impossible to pronounce a French word in 
recognizable fashion, and it would not be difficult to 
find wranglers and first-class men who, albeit loaded 
to the muzzle with Greek, Latin, and mathematics, find 



THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTE. 209 

it impossible to string together half a dozen intelligible 
French sentences. This, however, like other insular 
defects, will doubtless be cured in time. 

Wending my way towards the ''Birkbeck," on a 
fine bright evening, I confess within myself certain 
doubts as to where it is. A walk along Holborn, how- 
ever, brings me to Southampton Buildings, and a 
turn "round the corner" to the institution itself. 
The ground floor is occupied by the Birkbeck Bank, 
and this arrangement considerably reduces the small 
space available for the institution. Cheered by the 
sound of distant music, I make my way into the great 
lecture theatre, a structure so ample and commodious 
as to still further crowd the narrow class-rooms. 
Here I find a singing class in full operation, under the 
care of a teacher, who displays much patience and 
more energy in getting his class of some three hundred 
persons to sing in tune, and keep together. The sight 
is agreeable enough. Well-dressed young ladies and 
smart young men occupy the benches, and exercise 
their lungs vigorously, but I am a little disappointed 
at finding among them no trace of the artisan or his 
helpmate, and come reluctantly to the conclusion that 
either workmen have taken to dress very elegantly, or 
that the singing class is mainly composed of clerks 
and young ladies in similar positions of life. A little 
dashed at this, I pull myself together for something 



210 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

serious, and ask my way to the chemistry class, and 
after travelhng over many stairs find myself in an 
apartment which, were it not consecrated to the uses 
of science, I should not hesitate to designate the back 
kitchen. Bare white-washed walls throw up the in- 
evitable black board into strong relief, and a couple of 
flaring "butchers' lights" illumine a rough deal table, 
from behind which Mr. Chaloner lucidly expounds the 
properties of carbonic acid gas. The lecturer and the 
audience evidently mean business. The students are 
mostly pale young men — reminding me of the tra- 
ditional "pale student" who bent over the "midnight 
oil" Consule Planco — a personage entirely out of 
fashion since the invention of muscular Christianity, 
and the growth of a pretty general belief that, although 
a senior wrangler may be a deserving young man, 
the stroke oar of the winning eight over the Putney 
course is a hero. Older men, however, are not 
absent, and all are busily engaged in taking notes, 
evidently with a view to standing fire at the next 
" exam." 

This, now, is refreshing. Here, in this crowded 
back-kitchen, honest work is evidently being done. 
But the visitor may not dwell longer even upon 
carbonic acid gas, and makes his way up a staircase 
to a reading-room, crowded to an inconvenient degree. 
Here are young and old, perusing books and periodi- 



THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTE. 211 

cals, taking notes, making no noise, and reducing 
themselves to the smallest possible compass. The 
library is full of applicants awaiting their turn, and I 
become convinced that an atmosphere of bustle per- 
vades the entire institution. Knowledge is sold here 
at a moderate price, the business is brisk, and the 
customers many. 

On paying a second visit to the Birkbeck Institute, 
I find the mathematical class hard at work, the 
master appearing to be on the best terms with his 
XDupils, who are working with a will. At this I am 
not surprised, as no human being would care to trifle 
or dally with algebra — mere dilettanti students almost 
invariably selecting some easier subject. Hardly so 
severe is the attention given to Mr. Wilson's lecture on 
optics, whereat many ladies are present. Sitting and 
listening, or mayhap, taking a few notes, put by no 
means so severe a strain upon the scholar as actual 
computation. It is possible for reasonable human 
beings to listen to lectures on physics and enjoy them- 
selves very much, and this appears to be the case with 
the present class. Forsaking the lecturer, just as he 
is proving to his audience — experimentally — that the 
angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, I 
mount more stairs and assist at an animated scene. 
The elocution class is in full blast, and perhaps 
<3ombines more amusement with instruction than any 



212 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

class I ever attended. The master is perspiring with 
his exertions in endeavouring to inspire the scholars 
with some of that energy of which he possesses an 
ample share. I do not — on mature reflection — think 
that I should like to be a teacher of elocution. Thi& 
valuable pursuit may, like other professions, have its 
peculiar consolations and subtle pleasures, but to the 
uninitiated it seems but dull work, this striving to 
inoculate the untutored mind with some little taste 
and accuracy in speaking or reading a plain sentence.. 
Nevertheless, elocution is a good thing, if only for it& 
use in teaching some little respect for the letter //, a 
hapless aspirate utterly disregarded by thorough-bred 
Londoners. Only those who discourse daily with all 
sorts and conditions of men are in a condition to 
explain their annoyance at being compelled to listen 
to the absurdly vulgar Cockney dialect. It absolutely 
flays "ears polite," which could listen with compara- 
tive pleasure to a rasping '^burr" or a "brogue thick 
enough to cut with a knife." A distinguished French- 
man once remarked that in England two distinct 
languages are spoken : one strongly accentuated and 
almost painfully distinct — the language of the highly- 
educated class — and the other, slurred, confused, and 
mumbled, so as to be almost unintelligible. So by 
all means let us have elocution, and as much of it a& 
I)ossible. 



THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTE. 213 

Coming downstairs again I step into another cell 
in this knowledge -hive, and find a botany class in 
progress, but my time is getting short, and I am 
compelled to descend once more into the depths, where 
a large drawing class is hard at it. In a semi-circular 
cavern, hung round with plaster casts, and lighted 
with flaring gas, is crowded together a large number 
of pupils busy over their drawing boards, and apply- 
ing themselves to their work with the persistence 
generally observed in those who pay for their instruc- 
tion out of their own hardly-earned wages. There is 
no dawdling and no '^larking" visible, and the spirit 
of work which apparently inspires every department 
of the ''Birkbeck" is clearly dominant in this ill- 
lighted cellar, where, in spite of every disadvantage, 
valuable knowledge and technical dexterity can be 
acquh'ed by those who seek for them. 

Stepping at length fi*om the heated atmosphere of 
the busy " Birkbeck " into the cool evening air, I 
cannot help reflecting on my visit with considerable 
pleasure. Here is an institution entirely self- 
supporting, unaided by subventions of any kind. It 
sells knowledge and good sound practical, technical 
teaching at a fabulously low price, and yet maintains 
itself in a solvent condition without assistance from 
those grumbling shareholders, who sit like an incubus 
on more than one institution, and groan over the 



214 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

daily depreciation of their property. Cooped up in a 
narrow space, crowded nightly from garret to cellar, 
the Birkbeck Institute is well enough managed to 
get through an immense amount of good honest useful 
work. It is in every respect an important aid to 
education, and is invaluable to those classes which 
avail themselves of it ; but, alas ! — the ine\itable 
amai'i aliquid — I should like to have seen a little more 
of the genuine mechanic. 



( 215 ) 



IX. 

THE GEESHAM LECTUEES. 

Happening to pass along Basingiiall Street, I was 
attracted by a programme setting forth the Gresham 
Lectures to be deHvered dming Hilary Term, 1874, in 
the lecture theatre of the building known as Gresham 
College. Seven subjects were to be discoursed upon : — 
Astronomy, Physic, Khetoric, Law, Geometry, Divinity, 
and Music. The Latin lectures were to be delivered 
at six o'clock in the evening, and the English lectures 
at seven. The public were to be admitted gratis. 

I had often heard of the Gresham Lectures, and had 
been frequently told by troublesome people, who are 
always worrying about progress and the nineteenth 
century and similar positive subjects, that the out- 
come of Sir Thomas Gresham' s bequest had been very 
small indeed, and that great difficulty had been ex- 
perienced at various times in getting anything done 
at all. Little more than a century and a quarter 



216 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

after the death of the worthy Knight in 1579, it was 
found necessary to draw attention to the management, 
or rather mismanagement, of Gresham College, in a 
pamphlet entitled, ''An Account of the Eise, Founda- 
tion, Progress, and present State of Gresham College 
in London, with the Life of the Founder, Sir Thomas 
Gresham ; as also of some late endeavours for obtain- 
ing the Kevival and Eestitution of the Lectures there, 
with some remarks thereon." This curious produc- 
tion, after setting forth the terms of Sir Thomas 
Gresham's will, complains bitterly that the provisions 
of the trust were not complied with, the number of 
lectures having been very much reduced from that 
prescribed by the will. The anonymous writer is 
inclined to attribute the disuse of the lectures to "the 
late troubles" — as convenient an explanation of every- 
thing in the seventeenth century, as was the French 
Eevolution of everything in the nineteenth. Never- 
theless, positive evidence exists that, during the pro- 
tectorate of Cromwell, the attention of that great man 
was keenly pointed towards the Gresham professor- 
ships. In a letter preserved in the City Library at 
Guildhall, the great Puritan intervenes actively in the 
management of an election. This document is dated 
from Whitehall, 9th May, 1656, and is addressed to 
the Gresham Committee of the City of London, as 
follows : — " Gentlemen, — Wee understanding that you 



THE GRESHAM LECTURES. 217 

have appointed an election this afternoon of a 
geometry professor in Gresham CoUidge, wee desire 
you to suspend the same for some tyme till we shall 
have an opportunitie to speak with you in order to 
that business. — Your louving friend, Oliver P." From 
this document, it may safely be inferred that the Lord 
Protector looked sharply enough after the Gresham 
Committee. At what was called " the Happy Eestaur- 
ation of King Charles the Second," Gresham College 
was stirred into unusual activity by the Koyal Society. 
Dr. Eobert Hooke was at that time Professor of 
Geometry in Gresham College, and acquired so great 
a reputation as to induce Sir John Cutler to found a 
Mechanic Lecture. The Chair of Geometry was also 
filled by Isaac Barrow, and that of Astronomy by Sh* 
Christopher Wren. Nevertheless, so great was the 
cause of complaint in 1706, that a memorial was laid 
before the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, 
setting forth that the subscribers had attended the 
lectures founded by Sir Thomas Gresham at Gresham 
College, which were devised by his will to be read 
^' every day in the week, for the Instruction of Youth 
and others of this city in useful knowledge. But the 
present professors read only in Term Time,'' etc. The 
writer of the pamphlet, moreover, avers that, although 
the greatest part of the professors "appear to be 
Gentlemen of Civihty, Ingenuity, and Candour, yet 



218 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

they seemed to discover an unwillingness and re- 
luctancy to perform so useful a work, because it 
required some pains and attendance, and were so far 
from the ambition of being crowded with auditors, 
that they seemed rather to desire to have none at all ; 
for though they could not altogether disown their 
obligation to read the aforesaid lectures (without 
which acknowledgment they could not be entitled to 
their salaries), yet they pretended (without the least 
shadow of authority) to confine themselves to do it 
only in the Terms, and at those times, to render them 
more insignificant, they retrenched the first and last 
weeks of every Term." It also appears that the 
lecturers, "not content herewith, exemiDted themselves 
from the duty every holiday that happened in each 
Term, refusing to read on such a day, even though it 
W'ere Divinity, by this means they reduced it to what 
was next to nothing ; and together with the affronts 
of some on those that come to demand their lectures, 
the uncertainty of the times and days when they were 
to be read, the meanness and indifferency of some of 
them when they did read, being often without method, 
design, or regular handling a Subject, not confining 
themselves to their proper province but passing in a 
desultory manner from one subject to another, without 
that order and connection as might have been wished, 
so far discouraged and baulked the expectation of the 



THE GRESHAM LECTURES. 219' 

auditory that they almost gained their point," and 
were very near being abandoned to their own devices 
and allowed to draw theii' salary without doing any- 
thing for it at all. Whether the Grand Committee for 
managing the affairs of Gresham College, which con- 
sisted then as now of four aldermen and eight com- 
moners of the City of London and twelve commoners 
for the Company of Mercers, ever did anything in the 
matter is not very clear. Things went on more or less 
lamely in Gresham College — actually the mansion 
originally inhabited by Sir Thomas Gresham himself, 
extending from Bishopsgate Street to Broad Street, 
and which, on escaping from the Great Fire of London, 
became the Chamber, the Guildhall, the Common 
Hall, and the Exchange, of the remaining City. On 
this occasion the lodgings of the Divinity Professor 
were given up to the Lord Mayor, the reading-rooms 
were appropriated to the City courts and officers, 
the quadrangle was allotted to the merchants for an 
Exchange, and small shops were allowed to be built 
in the galleries and the piazza, for the accommoda- 
tion of the poor tradesmen who had been burnt out 
of their shops at the Eoyal Exchange. " Thus 
Gresham College became an epitome of this great 
city, and the centre of all affairs, both public and 
private, which were then transacted in it." 

In 1768, the College having fallen into a dilapidated 



220 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

condition, and the Excise Office in the Old Jewry 
being also in a tumble-down state, the site of Gres- 
ham College was selected for the new Excise Office. 
True reverence for antique monuments was not a 
characteristic of the latter half of the eighteenth 
century. The site and buildings were alienated to 
the Crown on payment to the City and Mercers Com- 
23any of a perpetual rent of £500 per annum; the 
City and Company paying £1800 down towards the 
•expense of pulling down the College and erecting the 
new office. On this occasion "the collegiate estab- 
lishment was entirely subverted." In lieu of a college 
with resident celibate professors, a room at the Eoyal 
Exchange was set apart for reading the lectures, and 
the professors were allowed £50 a year in lieu of 
apartments, over and above the original salary of £50 
a year for reading the lectures. The evil effect of this 
total reversal of the condition enjoined by the will of 
Sir Thomas Gresham was soon made manifest. The 
lectures were scantily attended, partly owing to the 
inconvenient hour at which they were held, and 
partly owing to the advanced age of many of the 
lecturers, a natural consequence of residence and 
celibacy being dispensed with. The average number 
of the audience at the lectures, from 1800 to 1820 
inclusive, was only ten per English lecture, and 
thirteen at all the Latin lectures for the whole year. 



THE GRESHAM LECTURES. 221 

After the burning of the Eoyal Exchange the Gres- 
ham Lectures enjoyed a nomadic existence until 1841, 
when the Joint Gresham Committee jDurchased a plot 
of ground at the corner of Basinghall Street and 
Gresham Street, and erected on it the present build- 
ing, at a cost of ^7000. This was opened on the 2nd 
of November, 1843. 

From time to time slight modifications have been 
introduced into the Gresham Lectures, with a view to 
making them of some intelligible use. After a pro- 
longed struggle the professors were brought to issue 
a syllabus of lectures, and as the old hands were 
slowly gathered to their fathers the hours of lecturing 
were transferred to the evening, and things were said 
to be much better managed. 

Still, uncomfortable rumours had reached me and 
had excited my curiosity. It was reported that persons 
had vainly striven to obtain admission to the Latin 
lectures ; that the doors were only o^Dcned for five 
minutes just before six o'clock, and were then sum- 
marily closed unless within that short space of time 
three persons had obtained entrance — no smaller 
number being considered an audience. It was openly 
declared that by a careful observance of these pre- 
cautions the professors, who received £100 per annum 
for reading at most twelve Latin and twelve English 
lectures, generally contrived to evade the Latin lecture 



222 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

altogether. At any rate, I failed to unearth any- 
human being who had ever heard a Gresham lecture, 
and was thereupon moved to make an excursion in 
search of information conveyed in the vehicle of 
an ancient language. 

Finding announced for the evening of Friday, the 
23rd of January, a lecture on Geometry, by the Very 
Eeverend B. M. Cowie, B.D., Dean of Manchester, I 
presented myself at Gresham College at five minutes 
before six. Possibly all people look mean when in 
search of information; at any rate, I have no doubt 
I did ; for on slinking into the hall-way I received 
from a remarkably fine specimen of the British beadle 
a glance wherein astonishment and contempt were 
deliciously blended. Escaping as quickly as possible 
from the awful presence of this magnate, I found 
myself the solitary tenant of a huge lecture-room, 
garnished with particularly hard and uncomfortable 
seats of that peculiar make which is su23posed to 
'Conduce to the preservation of a vigilant attitude. 
Fervently hoping that two more victims would turn 
up before the clock struck six, I sat down on one of 
the benches, hard as the nether millstone, and glanced 
aground me in tranquil wretchedness. 

The lecture theatre presented a dreary aspect. 
A dim religious light revealed the dismal scene. A 
peculiar atmosphere — suggestive of long-since de- 



THE GEESHAM LECTURES. 223 

parted lecturers and of audiences gone ages since to 
their rest — pervaded the hall of despair. In tho 
absence of living, breathing human beings, it was not 
difficult for the imagination to conjure up visions of 
departed worthies. Seated gravely in the midst 
appeared the form of Sir Thomas Gresham himself, 
surrounded by a crowd of knights and scholars clad in 
doublet, trunk hose, and agonizing ruffs, or in the 
velvet gowns proper to great merchants and citizens 
of the chief city of the State. The thoughful yet 
eager and enthusiastic Ealeigh, yet young, was hold- 
ing solemn converse with the great merchant, and 
evidently trying to impress him with the certain 
success of the Great Eldorado Company, Limited. 
Lilly and the hero of Zutphen were there, giving a 
courtly air to the proceedings; while in a remote 
corner sat "rare Ben Jonson," poet, wit, and scholar, 
deprecating in his heart of hearts the utilitarian ten- 
dency of the age, and foreseeing, in the passion for 
enterprise and greed of gain that had suddenly over- 
come the nation, a parallel condition of things to that 
which prevailed in Kome before the smouldering con- 
spiracy of Catiline burst into the flames of civil war. 

Harvey, still young, with pale, worn face, deep in 
thought, not having yet lighted on his grand discovery 
of the circulation of the blood, anxiously awaited the 
commencement of the lecture, while a choice knot of 



224 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

navigators — Cavendish and Frobisher, Drake, and 
bluff Sir John Hawkins — surrounded by a few of the 
old crew of that tall ship, the Pelican, discoursed 
largely on the state of affairs in the Spanish main and 
the golden sands of remote California. A slight bustle 
at the door, and in troops a merry crowd of dramatists 
full of glee, warmed by the generous wine dispensed 
at that famous hostelry, the "Mermaid." But the 
clock strikes six, and at that sound the weird spectres 
vanish, and I become aware that I am not living 
in the age of Armadas, Manilla galleons, inquisi- 
tions, and St. Bartholomew massacres, but am sitting 
on a hard wooden bench, in what is now merely the 
core of the modern Babylon, and that the date is 
January 23rd, 1874. 

Looking around in search of an audience I make 
out, with some difficulty, a total of seven persons, all 
of the male sex. Two of these cautiously remain 
near the door, as if uncertain as to the duration of 
their sojourn, while the remaining ^Ye — adventurous 
spirits these — boldly occupy the body of the theatre.. 
No gorgeous doublets or stupendous ruffs adorn the 
persons of these visitors, the place of those articles of 
raiment being supplied by seedy overcoats and limj) 
shirt- collars — serrated as to their edges. Swords 
they wear none — well-worn umbrellas of sober alj)aca, 
or modest gingham, assimilating better with the sad- 



THE GRESHAM LECTURES. 225 

coloured raiment of the nineteenth century. These 
men are clearly not youthful students, but, for all 
that, take no small interest in the proceedings — 
especially one slender gentleman with a studious cast 
of features. Another and smaller gentleman with a 
beard takes notes vigorously, while a burly, bull- 
necked man struggles desperately to invest his 
features with a look of attentive intelligence. 

Ushered in by the superb beadle, the lecturer — a 
bright, pleasant-looking gentleman (by the way, not 
the Dean of Manchester, who probably has other and 
bigger fish to fry elsewhere) — puts in appearance. At 
first I am inclined to sympathize with this victim to 
empty benches, but on reflecting that he probably 
clears some four or five guineas by the transaction, 
I restrain my feelings, which, moreover, undergo 
singular changes as the evening advances — alternat- 
ing between calm endurance, nervous irritability, 
savage fury, and stolid despair. 

Advancing to the table, and casting a glance of 
patient resignation at the meagre audience, the 
lecturer proceeds maxima celeritate to — as the French 
call it — ''execute himself." He is supplied with a 
manuscript well-thumbed and worn, and exhibiting a 
marked tendency to dogs' ears. Away he dashes 
at a tearing pace, as if determined to make short 
work of the lecture — a singular Latin disquisition 

Q 



226 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

written with very little regard to classic grace, 
albeit abundantly seasoned with lengthy Greek quo- 
tations clumsily strung together like pearls on rotten 
twine. The lecture is carried on almost entirely in 
the language of Plato and Aristotle, who are laid 
heavily under contribution. Diogenes Laertius is 
also heavily drawn upon, and the entire composition 
assumes the appearance of a burlesque on one of 
those mediaeval disquisitions wherein profuse quota- 
tion is made to supply the place of original thought. 
The third Greek quotation makes short work of the 
man nearest the door, who, evidently recollecting an 
engagement, beats a hasty retreat. His neighbour 
exhibits greater powers of endurance, and fights 
bravely against a crushing sense of fatigue till a 
huge slab of Diogenes Laertius finally demolishes 
him, and he retires precipitately a sadder, if not a 
wiser man. Shortly after this the central phalanx 
shows signs of disintegration — a quiet gentleman, who 
had up to this point struggled manfully against a 
propensity to yawn, being finally killed off by a highly 
interesting and absorbing investigation into the ques- 
tion whether Thales did or did not import geometry 
from Egypt into Greece. The listeners are now 
reduced to four, evidently determined to be in at the 
death ; but the most stalwart these of clearly wishes 
himself awa^^ and is only restrained from executing 



THE GRESHAM LECTURES. "227 

a flank movement by a feeling of courtesy towards the 
lecturer, who still reads on at a rapid pace. Calm 
despair at length takes possession of the audience, 
whose countenances indicate four distinct shades of 
misery when the lecturer, after a rapid rush of words, 
arrives at the final dixi. Before forsaking the gloomy 
scene this gentleman addresses a few courteous sen- 
tences to the audience, deprecating any severe 
criticism of the Latin lecture. It was invariably so 
thinly attended, and so frequently not attended at 
all, that it had been thought unnecessary to devote 
any particular attention to the writing of the Latin 
lecture, but if better and more appreciative audiences 
could be counted upon, better Latin lectures would 
have been prepared. Moreover, an English lecture 
on trigonometry would be delivered at seven o'clock, 
and perhaps might prove more intelligible to an 
audience presumabty unable to understand Latin. 
This is all vastly well, of course, but I fail to see why 
— if a Latin lecture must be delivered — it should not 
be a good one ; nor is it sun clear why a Latin lecture 
should consist almost entirely of Greek quotations, 
and be confined exclusively to the history of ancient 
geometry. Does a mysterious glamour come over 
English scholars when they undertake the task of 
Latin prose composition? Do they feel themselves 
compelled to ignore all allusion to discoveries in 



228 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

mathematical science by the moderns, who, whatever 
their inferiority to the ancients in other respects, are 
certainly not behind them in scientific acquirements ? 
Is it felt that anything less than a couple of thousand 
years old should not be written of in Latin, or is 
the whole dreary performance recognized by writers 
of Latin discourses, as a ridiculous anachronism? 
If so, they agree with the scanty audience, quorum 
pars magna fui, and the sooner the whole sham is 
abolished the better. 

An interval of a quarter of an hour suffices to 
recuperate my energies sufficiently for the English 
lecture. The theatre at seven o'clock is, as compared 
with its condition at six, absolutely crowded. Nearly 
forty persons must be present, and among them are 
several ladies. The lecture lasts an hour, and is in 
many respects a curious production, conveying the 
idea that an attempt is being made to teach trigo- 
nometry to persons entirely ignorant of even the first 
book of Euclid. This difficulty hampers the lecturer 
sadly, and in the endeavour to grapple with it much 
time is cut to waste. To begin with, the fourth- 
proposition of the first book requires a lengthy ex- 
position. A knowledge of the proposition that if in 
any two triangles, two sides of similar length enclose 
similar angles, the third sides shall also be equal each 
to each, and enclose similar angles — although indis- 



THE GRESHAM LECTURES. 229 

pensable as a stepping-stone to the i^ons aslnorum, and 
necessary to a proper comprehension of trigonometry 
— might surely be assumed in a lectm^e on the latter 
science. 

An acquaintance with the nature of a right-angled 
triangle, and the division of the circumference of a 
•circle into 360 degs., might also, I should think, be 
safely assumed in persons ambitious to acquire the 
useful science of trigonometry. 

By a desire to teach this pretty branch of mathe- 
matics without pre-supposingthe slightest mathematical 
knowledge, the lecturer constantly finds his progress 
arrested by the necessity for recurring to the primary 
truths of geometry. The effort is laudable because 
well meant, but can hardly prove either interesting or 
instructive to any class of auditors. Those ignorant 
of the first book of Euclid can hardly be taught the 
propositions necessary to a comprehension of trigo- 
nometry within the limits of a lecture, while those 
to whom elementary mathematics are familiar are 
simply tired and bored to death by twice-told tales. 
The whole attempt is just like trying to teach children 
to read without making them learn their ABC. 
Thanks to recent improvements in the method of 
teaching mathematics, Euclid has been made easy to 
minds of the slenderest capacity. There is thus no 
excuse for those who, wishing to take a short cut to 



230 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

trigonometry, find it, without a slight acquaintance 
with geometry and algebra, the longest way round. 

It is disappointing to find that, in an age when so 
much talk is heard about education, no better emx3loy- 
ment can be found for the Gresham bequests than in 
lectures from which no human being can possibly 
learn anything. Lectures may either be addressed to 
students who are supposed to know something, or to 
the public who may — if it please the lecturer — be 
supposed to know nothing ; but Latin lectures on the 
purely historical aspect of a science, and English 
lectures which profess — if they profess anything — to 
teach trigonometry to persons totally ignorant of the 
first principles of mathematics, can only be regarded 
as anachronisms and blunders. The concio ad clerum 
is simply ridiculous — the concio ad pojmlum utterly 
impracticable and useless. 



( 231 ) 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGEAPH 
ENGINEEES. 

Speinging from the recesses of the human mind at 
the period of that great upheaval of intelHgence 
known as the "Eenaissance," the stream of scientific 
knowledge — like a mountain torrent newly issued 
from its parent glacier — for a while jDrogressed by 
leaps and bounds — diverted hither and thither by 
the rocks of superstition and scholasticism, and bore 
with it the opaque particles of tradition. Acquning 
strength in its progress, the turbid flood b}^ degrees 
assumed the proportions of a majestic river, which 
having undergone purification by its passage through 
the lake of Time, emerges at length comparatively 
bright and pure only to undergo subdivision into a 
myriad of minute rills, narrow indeed, but clear 
and well defined. Nature-knowledge, once comprised 
under the heads of alchemy and of astrology, has 



232 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

given birth to almost innumerable subdivisions of 
scientific thought. Forces once undreamt of have 
one by one been revealed to the patient investi- 
gator. The powers of steam, of water, and of elec- 
tricity have by turns occupied the attention of the 
scientific world, and their practical application to 
the wants of mankind has engaged the energies of the 
engineer. For a while this great artificer of modern 
times essayed to hold in one hand and in one brain 
the art of making nature the handmaid of man ; but 
the rapid development of scientific discovery and the 
exactions of modern life have, within our day, now 
compelled engineers — like other men of science — to 
devote themselves exclusively to one groove of their 
profession. Thus we now have the hydraulic, the 
railway, the mechanical, the mining, and lastly, the 
telegraph engineer. 

Electric telegraphy, now second in importance to 
none of the great inventions which have given this 
country a practical character peculiarly its own, is, in 
simple English, a thing of yesterday. It is true that 
many of the properties of electricity had long been 
known, but the earliest discovery that it was possible 
to transmit electricity through considerable distances 
was made in 1727 by Stephen Gray, the first Copley 
medallist of the Eoyal Society, and afterwards — a 
pensioner of the Charter House ! Various electricians 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 233 

repeated and improved upon his experiments, but the 
idea of transmitting inteUigence by electricity was 
slowly evolved. The first person upon whom it 
dawned appears to have been Charles Marshall, who 
wrote a letter signed " C. M.," in the Scots Magazine, 
of the 1st of February, 1758, describing a perfectly 
practical system of electric telegraphy which could, if 
better systems were not in oi^eration, be advantageously 
used at the present day. At the period just referred 
to, frictional electricity, the kind least adapted for 
telegraphic purposes, was the only electricity known. 
Owing to this and other reasons, the electric telegraph 
remained for a long time in an embryonic state, albeit 
the late Sir Francis Eonalds, prior to 1816, made 
many interesting experiments, and ultimately erected 
a complete electric telegraph on his lawn at Hammer- 
smith. In his endeavours to obtain recognition of his 
invention by the Government of the day, he was not 
more fortunate than the inventor who propounded a 
somewhat similar scheme to Napoleon. He received, 
in reply to his note pressing the electric telegraph 
upon the notice of the Admiralty, the following 
thoroughly official letter from Mr., afterwards Sir 
John, Barrow : — 

" Mr. Barrow presents his compliments to Mr. 
Eonalds, and acquaints him, with reference to his note 
of the 3rd inst., that telegraphs of any kind are now 



234 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

wholly unnecessary, and that no other than the one 
now in use will be adopted." 

Sir Francis Eonalds was not a man to be dis- 
heartened by an official rebuff, and pursuing his 
experiments, published in 1823 his " Description of 
an Electrical Telegraph," in which occurs the follow- 
ing prophetic passage : — 

"Why has no serious trial yet been made of the 
qualifications of so diligent a courier ? And if it should 
be proved competent to the task, why should not our 
kings hold councils at Brighton, with their ministers 
in London ? Why should not our Government govern 
at Portsmouth almost as promptl}^ as in Downing 
Street ? Why should our defaulters escape by default 
of our foggy climate ? And since our piteous inamorati 
are not all Alphei, why should they add to the 
torments of absence those dilatory tormentors, pens,, 
ink, paper, and posts ? Let us have electrical conver- 
sazione offices, communicating with each other, all 
over the kingdom, if we can." 

Meanwhile an immense advance in electrical science 
was made by (Ersted, who in 1819 discovered that a 
magnetic needle could be moved by an electric current. 
On this principle — on Sturgeon's discovery that a 
piece of iron surrounded by electric currents becomes a 
magnet, and on the discovery by Sir Humphry Davy 
and others of the chemical decomposition occasioned 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 235 

by electrical currents — depends the modern science of 
telegraphy. An important contribution was also made 
in 1827 by Professor Ohm, who determined the laws 
which govern the passage of electric currents through 
conductors. Electricians, now able to move needles, 
to attract armatures, and to produce telegraphic signs 
on chemically -j)repared paper, made a vast number of 
experiments. Perhaps the nearest approach to a 
practical application of newly-discovered powers was 
made by Baron Schilling in 1832, and by Steinheil in 
1837. About this latter date the feasibility of electric 
telegraphy was not only admitted, but largely com- 
mented on in scientific lectures. 

Many independent investigators were at work, and 
the usual race took place for the prize of praise or 
profit awarded to the first adaptation of principles to 
necessities. In the case of the electric telegraph, as 
in that of railways, the prize was destined to fall to 
England. In March, 1836, the present She William 
Fothergill Cooke was studying anatomy at Heidelberg, 
and, on attending Monck's Experimental Lectures on 
Physics, was so much struck with the power of 
electricity, and its obvious applicability to telegraphic 
purposes, that he relinquished his former pursuits and 
devoted his entire energies to the production of an 
electric telegraph. Eeturning at once to England, he 
made the acquaintance of John Lewis Pdcardo, Piobert 



*236 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Stephenson, George Parker Bidder, and other wealthy 
.and enterprising men, and laid his ideas hefore them. 
In February, 1837, he obtained an introduction to Sir 
Charles Wheatstone, who had attracted great attention 
by the lectures which he had previously delivered at 
King's College, and whose brilliant demonstration of 
the extreme velocity of electricity had astonished and 
•delighted the scientific world. The meeting of Cooke 
and Wheatstone was destined to have a most important 
influence on the progress of telegraphy, which now 
became rapid. A partnership was formed, a patent 
granted, and the first practical telegraph was laid 
down for the London and Birmingham Kailway, 
between Euston and Camden Town, within the space 
of a few, months. This parent line consisted of five 
•'Copper wires embedded in a triangular piece of wood. 

Several lines were now laid down, and in 1846 the 
Electric Telegraph Company was incorporated. At 
first the venture was very unsuccessful, and the com- 
pany was on the verge of ruin, when the arrest of 
Tawell, the Beading murderer — the first culprit 
'' arrested by telegraph " — drew public attention to the 
value of the new messenger, and the electric telegraph 
became a commercial success. 

While Cooke and Wheatstone were, in 1837, laying 
■down their first line in England, Professor Morse was 
iit work in America, and not only discovered a tele- 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 23T 

graph, but the admirable system of notation which 
bears his name, and which, with sHght modification, 
has held its ground ever since. In other respects the 
original English lines have undergone considerable 
modification. At first, five wires and five needles 
were used, but it was soon discovered that by repeating 
the right and left movements of the needle, the 
alphabet could be sent equally well on two needles, or 
even on one. 

In America, preference was given to the Morse 
system of registration, which consists in embossing: 
dots and lines upon a strip of paper, and a modified 
form of the Morse instrument, by which the marks are 
made with ink, rapidly came into use in England, and 
now prevails throughout the world. In spite of the 
general success of this plan, other systems have at 
times obtained considerable popularity. In 1838 a 
patent was taken out by Mr. Edward Davy for a 
chemical marking telegraph. In 1846 Mr. Alexander 
Bain invented another system of chemical telegraphy, 
and also a method of perforating messages upon slips 
of paper, which on being dra\^Ti through a machine- 
enable the operator to transmit intelligence at an 
enormous speed. Although these inventions remained 
in abeyance for a while, they have been recently 
revived by Wheatstone and others, and to the idea of 
using perforated slips is due the recent development- 



238 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of automatic telegraphy, a process by which 500 words 
per minute can be transmitted. 

During the spread of terrestrial telegraphy, the idea 
that submarine cables could be laid gradually gained 
strength. In 1850 the first submarine cable was laid 
between Dover and Cape Grisnez. This consisted 
simply of a copper wire surrounded by gutta-percha, 
and enjoyed but a brief existence, owing to the inter- 
ference of some fishermen, who, mistaking it for an 
obstinate and objectionable species of seaweed, hauled 
it up and cut it. In the following year a stronger 
cable was laid. This was made of four wu-es encased 
in gutta-percha surrounded with hemp — the whole 
being surrounded by spiral iron wires. The main 
features of this typical cable have since been closely 
adhered to, and the success of this and other lines pro- 
duced the project of laying a cable across the Atlantic. 
This scheme was brought into public notice mainly by 
"the exertions of Mr. Cyrus Field, who induced a 
number of London and Liverpool capitalists to sub- 
scribe ^1000 apiece for the purpose of carrying it out. 
In 1857 the' cable was laid, but, owing to the imperfect 
•state of electrical science at that period, proved a 
failm^e. In consequence of this untoward event, a 
committee was appointed to inquire into the best form 
of submarine cable, an event in the history of science, 
dihe importance of which it is difficult to exaggerate. 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 239 

Many witnesses were examined, and the outcome of 
the investigation was the laying of another cable in 
1865. Misfortune still i^ursued the scheme. The 
second cable broke in deep water, but in 1866 a third 
cable was laid, and that of 1865 was cleverly picked up 
by Sir Samuel Canning. In the mean time a great im- 
provement had been introduced into the construction 
of submarine cables by Mr. Latimer Clark (who had 
previously acquired celebrity by the invention of the 
double bell insulator). His plan consisted in encasing 
the cable in a covering of hemp, asphalte, and silica, 
applied over the iron wires so as to prevent their 
corrosion by the action of sea-water, an invention to 
which the commercial success of ocean telegraphy is 
in great measure to be attributed. Cables made on 
this plan were laid to the Isle of Man, in the Persian 
Gulf, and between Malta and Alexandria. Ultimately 
the whole Eastern world was brought into connection 
with England by cables stretching from Suez to Aden 
and Bombay, and thence to Singapore, China, and 
Port Darwin. 

Pending the introduction of telegraphic communica- 
tion between San Francisco and China, for which 
surveys are now being made, and which will complete 
the telegraphic girdle of the world, the Southern 
Atlantic has been crossed by a cable from Madeira to 
Brazil, thus bringing South America in direct com- 



240 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

munication with Lisbon, Falmouth, and London. In 
the work of developing the telegraphic system of the 
world. Englishmen have taken a prominent position. 
It is almost invidious to signalize a few among the 
many eminent engineers who have distinguished them- 
selves in this department of their profession. Suffice 
it to say that in addition to those already mentioned, 
Sir WilHam Thomson, Mr. Fleeming Jenkin, Mr. C. 
F. Varley, and Sir Charles Bright have left their mark 
on the history of telegraphy. 

At the commencement of the present decade it was 
felt by many eminent electricians and members of the 
Institution of Civil Engineers that the department to 
which they had devoted themselves had at length 
assumed such imposing proportions as to demand a 
separate and special organization. Far from opposing 
the development of a new body, the parent society 
in Great George Street at once extended a help- 
ing hand to the scheme, and offered the free use 
of its handsome room for the meetings of the new 
society. To Major Frank Bolton and to Major 
Webber, E.E., is due the inception of the idea of a 
Society of Telegraph Engineers ; and these gentlemen 
were warmly supported by Messrs. Kobert Sabine, 
Latimer Clark, and Dr. C. W. Siemens. Between 
1871 and 1872 sixty members were enrolled, among 
wdiom were Dr. C. W. Siemens, president ; Lord 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 241 

Lindsay and Mr. Scudamore, vice-presidents ; Pro- 
fessor Foster, Captain Malcolm, and Captain Colomb. 
In the inaugural address delivered by the president, 
the necessity for a Society of Telegraph Engineers 
was eloquently insisted upon. It might have been 
urged against the new society that its objects were 
amply provided for by the institutions then in exist- 
ence. In the words of the president, it might have 
been asked, " Is telegraph engineering not a branch 
of civil engineering, and do not all our proceedings, 
therefore, fall within the legitimate sphere of action of 
the Institution of Civil Engineers ? Or, if we meet 
with difficult questions in physical or mathematical 
science, is not the Koyal Society or Section A of the 
British Association open for us to discuss them, or 
may we not go before the Institution of Mechanical 
Engineers with any purely mechanical question ? Is- 
it desirable, indeed, it may be urged, to take a branch 
from the parent stem and to cultivate it sejDarately ? 
Shall we not degenerate thereby into ' specialists,' or 
what may be called ' fractional quantities of scientific 
men,' and this in the face of the patent fact that the 
further we advance in scientific knowledge (whether 
pure or applied) the more clearly we perceive the 
intimate connection between its different branches, 
and the impossibility of cultivating one without con- 
stantly reverting to the others ? " 

R 



242 • SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

These possible objections were disposed of in the 
following admirable apology for specialism : — " If it is 
impossible for one man to master the special know- 
ledge accumulated in different branches of engineering 
science, it would be equally impossible for one society 
to cultivate all those branches in detail; thus the 
Eoyal Society can only entertain questions involving 
general principles of science, and is obliged to leave 
questions of exhaustive research to special societies; 
questions of minute chemical investigation are 
assigned to the Chemical Society ; questions regarding 
the orbits of celestial bodies to the Astronomical 
Society ; and by the same rule of limitation the Eoyal 
Society would refuse to receive, for instance, a paper 
on testing the joints of insulated wire, which would be 
a subject peculiarly suited for our Society. The 
Institution of Civil Engineers has, on the other hand, 
received, at certain intervals of time (varying from 
two to three years), a general paper on the progress 
of telegraph engineering; but it is self-evident that 
such an occasional paper must be quite inadequate to 
constitute a record of the progress of a branch of 
engineering which gives daily proof of its public 
importance, which is distinguished for its rapid 
development, and which comprises within itself a 
wide range of scientific inquiry; nor would there be 
time, on such rare occasions, to discuss questions of 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGEAPH ENGINEEKS. 243 

detail which are of special interest to the telegraph 
engineer." 

It was at once felt that it was most desirable to 
secure the support of men occupying influential 
positions in the great telegraphic systems of the 
world. As the world was already bound together by a 
great network of international telegraphy traversing 
deserts and mountain chains, the deep plateau of the 
Atlantic, and the more dangerous bottoms of tropical 
seas, it was very properly deemed necessary that the 
Society of Telegraph Engineers should be made a 
cosmopolitan institution — a focus into which the 
thoughts and observations of all countries might flow, 
in order to be again radiated in every direction, for 
the general advancement of science. To carry out this 
view, the practice of admitting foreign members — 
which has shed no little glory on many cognate 
societies — was adopted. Among the first to respond to 
ihe invitations of the Society were General von Liiders, 
Director- General of the Imperial Eussian Telegraphs ; 
Signor D'Amico, Director- General of Telegraphs in 
Italy ; M. Ailhaud, Inspector-General of Telegraphic 
Lines in France; M. Vinchant, Inspector-General of 
PubKc Works in Belgium ; M. Hippolyte Aranjo, of 
Spain ; and Professor Campanena, the Director- 
General of Brazilian Telegraphs. 

In pursuance of this wise policy — imitating that of 



244 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

tlie Institution of Civil Engineers— the new Society 
now proceeded to enrol honorary members, notably 
Sir George Airy, K.C.B., Astronomer Eoyal, General 
Sir Edward Sabine, and Professor Weber. The 
pubhcation of a journal embodying the proceedings of 
the Society was the next object of solicitude. It wa& 
at first hoped that this important record of telegraphy 
might be published in the three most important 
languages of Europe ; but this idea — admirable in 
itself — was subsequently abandoned, and the Journal 
now appears, like those of other learned societies, 
simply in English. The Society went to work with a 
will. So early as the session of 1872 was read a 
paper on " Automatic Telegraphy " — a subject now 
engaging the earnest attention of the telegraphic world 
— by Mr. E. S. Culley. During the same session an 
interesting discussion on ''Sea Telegraphy" was- 
induced by an able paper read by Captain Colomb, 
K.N. Army telegraphs were also discoursed upon by 
Captain Malcolm, and the a^Dplication of Colmar's 
calculating machine to electrical computation was 
explained by Mr. C. Bruce Warren. 

During the session 1872-73 many papers of great 
interest were read, among which may be cited the 
following : — '' On Military Telegraphs in connection 
with the Autumn Manoeuvres," " On Lightning and 
Lightning Conductors," " On the Application of Iron 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 245 

to Telegraph Poles," and on "Earth Currents." The 
^' Block System" also came in for a large share of 
attention, the reading and discussion of papers on 
this important subject having occupied several meet- 
ings of the Society. 

The proceedings of the Society are recorded in the 
Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, which 
contains, moreover, much valuable matter in the form 
of abstracts, translations, and original communica- 
tions, and is admirably edited by the hon. sec. Major 
Prank Bolton, and the secretary, Mr. G. E. Preece. 
Among other valuable matter contained in its pages 
will be found copies of the photographic records of the 
various magnetic disturbances in the great magnetic 
storm of February 4th, 1872, contributed by the 
Astronomer Koyal, and a "Piegister of the Computed 
Force and the Direction of Earth Currents observed 
at Yalentia during 78 Days — from March 6th to May 
22nd, 1871, upon 1850 nauts of cable." This table is 
not only curious and valuable in itself, but is remark- 
al)le as an instance of ingenious editing. Mr. Preece 
considering that in printing a table containing 3744 
numerical statements — encumbered moreover by stars, 
dots, and dashes — the chances of error were very 
great, cut the knot by having the original document 
photographed and the prints inserted in the Journal. 

The Society of Telegraph Engineers has grown as 



246 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

rapidly as the science it reiDresents. The original sixty 
members have now increased to 580. These consist 
of Members, Associates, Students, Foreign Members,, 
and Honorary Members, governed by a Council com- 
posed of the president — Sir Wm. Thomson — the 
two past presidents — Mr. Scudamore and Dr. C. W. 
Siemens — four vice-presidents, twelve other members, 
and three Associates. In the case of any person 
desiring to become a full Member, certain qualifications 
are very properly insisted on. He must have been 
regularly educated as a telegraph engineer, and have 
had subsequent employment for at least five years in 
responsible situations ; or have practised on his own 
account as a telegraph engineer for at least two years,, 
and have acquired a certain degree of eminence in the 
profession ; or be so intimately associated with the 
science of electricity or the progress of telegraphy that 
the Council consider his admission to membership 
would conduce to the interests of the Society. 

Less rigid conditions are exacted in the case of 
Associates, who need only to be persons of more than 
twenty-one years of age whose pursuits constitute 
branches of electrical engineering, or who are in- 
timately associated with the science of electricity or 
the progress of telegraphy. 

Studentship is accorded to pupils under eighteen 
and not over twenty-one years of age. Foreign and 



THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS. 247 

Honorary Members are admitted on the conditions 
common to other scientific institutions. 

Apphcants for admission to the Society having been 
proposed and seconded in writing, and the application 
having been first submitted by the secretary to the 
Council, are elected by ballot — two-thirds of the 
members voting being required to secure election. 
Honorary Members only are elected by the Council 
without appeal to the general body. Every Member 
contributes two guineas, every Associate one guinea, 
every Foreign Member one pound, and every Student 
half-a-guinea annually to the Society. The session 
commences in November and ends in June, and the 
meetings still take place — thanks to the courtesy of 
the parent institution — in the great room of the 
Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, 
Westminster. These meetings resemble so closely 
those of the Civil Engineers, that it is needless for me 
to dwell upon the details of procedure. The discus- 
sions are always lively and suggestive — as might be 
expected at a meeting of the professors of a youthful 
science, marvellous enough in its akeady revealed 
power, but doubly interesting from its magnificent 
possibilities. 



248 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



XI. 

THE MUSEUM OF PEACTICAL 
GEOLOGY. 

Extending from Jermyn Street to Piccadilly is a 
handsome and commodious building which affords, 
perhaps, the best example in this country of what a 
museum ought to be. To begin with, it was built for 
a special purpose, and is not a conversion or adapta- 
tion of a structure originally intended for something 
else. Although containing objects which, from their 
industrial importance alone, are interesting . to all 
sorts and conditions of men, the Museum of Practical 
Geology is really and truly a museum in the highest 
and best acceptation of the word. It is not a mere 
collection of geological specimens prettily arranged to 
catch the eye and tickle the fancy of fashionable 
dabblers in the 'ologies, but is a superbly organized 
exhibition of the minerals of the British Islands, 
arranged with direct reference to their employment in 



THE MUSEUM OF PKACTICAL GEOLOGY. 249 

manufactures and to the instruction of students in 
their geographical distribution, geological formation, 
chemical and mineralogical character, and metal- 
lurgical treatment. This educational element is 
strengthened by metallurgical laboratories, and by 
the combination of the Eoyal School of Mines, to a 
certain extent, with the Museum. Mr. Pennethorne's 
handsome structure might, indeed, be described in 
the manner of Mrs. Malaprop as '* three institutions 
at once." The Eoyal School of Mines has been dealt 
with in a previous paper, and the Mining Eecord 
Office, a most valuable institution, may be described 
in a few words. The objects to which it is devoted are 
the collection, arrangement, and preservation of all 
sections of mines and collieries now in work or aban- 
doned, the collection of every kind of information 
connected with the mineral formations of the United 
Kingdom, and the collection and publication of mining 
statistics. It is unnecessary for me to descant upon 
the importance of these functions, or on the admirable 
manner in which they are performed, as the public 
is perfectly familiar with the Annual Statistical 
Eeturn of the mineral produce of the British Islands, 
prepared by Mr. Eobert Hunt, F.E.S., Keeper of 
Mining Eecords, and author, in conjunction with Mr. 
F. W. Eudler, of an admirable descriptive Guide to 
the Museum of Practical Geology. 



250 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

The triple institution in Jermyn Street is the direct 
outgrowth of the Geological Survey of the United 
Kingdom, commenced at first on his own account by 
Sir Henry Thomas de la Beche, and afterwards 
adopted by the Government. Having induced the 
Government to undertake this important work, Sir H. 
de la Beche lost no time in suggesting that the survey 
itself would supply means for collecting specimens of 
the applications of geology to the useful purposes of 
life. The importance of a museum which should 
illustrate the mineral productions of the country and 
show their commercial value was immediately recog- 
nized, and apartments at No. 6, Craig's Court, 
appointed to receive the nucleus of the present 
splendid collection. At first called the "Museum of 
Economic Geology," the collection soon became im- 
portant enough to need the services of a curator, and 
in 1839 Mr. Eichard Phillips, F.E.S., was appointed 
to that office. Being an able chemist, Mr. Phillips 
was induced to unite analytical investigations with 
his duties as curator. No sooner was a laboratory 
established and regular work commenced, than stu- 
dents sought admittance. At first only a limited 
number could be favoured, but the ultimate result of 
this wise addition of scientific demonstration to a 
special museum was the establishment of the Eoyal 
School of Mines. 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 251 

The museum in Jermyn Street was opened on May 
14th, 1851, by His Koyal Highness the late Prince 
Consort, and in its construction was made to illustrate 
some of the objects in view. The Piccadilly front is 
of Anston (Yorkshire) dolomite, or magnesian lime- 
stone, and the Jermyn Street front is composed partly 
of the same stone and partly of Suffolk bricks ; the 
steps at the entrance are of red Peterhead granite, at 
the doorway is a slab of Penrhyn slate, the pavement 
and steps leading into the hall are of Portland stone, 
the base of the sides of the vestibules is of Irish 
granite, the upper portion of polished Derbyshire 
alabaster, and the pilasters of grey Peterhead granite. 

The specimens are admirably arranged in separate 
lines of cases placed in such juxtaposition that the 
progress of any one metalliferous mineral may be 
traced from the geological stratum whence the ore is 
extracted through the various processes of manufac- 
ture till the metal ultimately assumes the forms 
required for use or ornament. Thus, the natural 
materials may be studied as to their lithological 
character, their geological order, or their mineralo- 
gical constitution ; the artificial productions, exhibit- 
ing the results of labour and science, may be investi- 
gated in a commercial, scientific, or artistic spirit; 
the models of mechanical appliances reveal the means 
by which industrial results are attained ; while a 



^52 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

yaluable collection of foreign and colonial minerals 
affords opportunities of comparing these with native 
13roduce, and a selection of historical specimens illus- 
trates the progress of metallurgy and the art of work- 
ing in metals in all countries and in all ages. 

To that most important of all metals — iron — much 
space is naturally devoted. Among the many speci- 
mens of British iron ores, the valuable red hsematite 
is represented by samples from Ulverstone and White- 
haven, where the development of the iron industry 
has, within a short space, enriched and populated a 
region previously remarkable for picturesqueness and 
poverty. The crystallized variety called s^Decular ore, 
or iron-glance, is illustrated by specimens from Cleator 
Moor, where it occurs in cavities in the compact ore, 
and the micaceous iron ores of Devon and Anglesey 
^re also well illustrated. 

The abundant and widely-diffused limonite or brown 
iron ore is also represented. From the earliest times 
this well-known mineral has been raised in the Forest 
of Dean, which, however, is only one of the many 
localities in which it is found in this country. From 
Cornwall come magnificent specimens of a variety of 
brown ore, called gothite — a crystallized hydrous 
peroxide of iron. Many fine samples appear of the 
brown iron ores of the secondary strata, especially 
those of the lias and the overlaying oolites. 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 253 

These ores have, within the last quarter of a century, 
acquired immense importance. Among the most 
celebrated is the Cleveland ironstone, the main body 
of which is a carbonate of the protoxide of iron, the 
upper part of the deposit passing into brown ore. 
This famous stratum — upon which the industry of a 
now wealthy and thickly-populated district depends — 
was discovered in 1848-49 on the north-eastern coast 
of Yorkshire. ''From Eedcar.to Middlesborough-on- 
Tees, there crops out a solid stratum no less than 
fifteen feet thick. This remarkable ironstone seam 
extends over a region of some hundreds of square 
miles. It is capped by sandy shales containing 
scattered nodules of ironstone, and ultimately — above 
the marlstone series to which it belongs — by the upper 
lias shale, so well known along the Whitby coast for 
its fossils, jet, and the application of some of the beds 
to the manufacture of alum." The Northamptonshire 
and Lincolnshire ironstones are also extensively 
w^orked. The first-named occurs in the Northampton 
Sand, at the base of the Great Oolite, while the 
Lincolnshire ironstone — like that of Cleveland — is 
found in the Marlstone or Middle Lias. 

In carbonates of iron England is less rich than 
many foreign countries, but fine specimens of spathose 
ore come from the Brendon Hills, in Somersetshire, 
and from Weardale, in Durham. When associated 



254 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

■with certain argillaceous impurities impeding its 
crystallization, this carbonate of iron becomes the 
well-known clay ironstone, which, although hardly 
entitled to rank as a distinct mineralogical species — 
and therefore destitute of purely scientific interest — 
is of great commercial value from its distribution 
through South Wales, North Wales, Shropshire, 
South Staffordshire, Warwickshire, North Stafford- 
shire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and the northern 
counties. Among these clay ironstones are samples 
of the famous carbonaceous ironstone known as 
*' black band," from which the largest quantity of 
Scotch iron is made. This ore, which was discovered 
in 1801 by Mr. Mushet, is frequently called " Mushet 
stone." 

Among the foreign and colonial iron ores are the 
Canadian bog ore, the richer magnetic ore, and 
titaniferous iron, which occur in large quantities in 
the Dominion. Of great interest also are numerous 
specimens of the magnetic u^on ores of Sweden. These 
are distributed over an area of 16,000 square miles. 
The best iron is obtained from the Dannemora mines, 
and large quantities are exported to England, where 
they are employed at Sheffield and other places for 
making steel. Beautiful specimens of specular iron 
ore are contributed by the Isle of Elba, where enormous 
deposits occur. This ore, famous even in remote 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 255 

antiquity, has long been worked by large open excava- 
tions. Elba also possesses rich veins of magnetic ore, 
associated with haematite, at the famous Loadstone 
Mountain, or Monte Calamita. Specimens of brown 
iron ore come from many countries, but more 
interesting than these are the blocks of spathose from 
Dauphine, Styria, Carinthia, and last, but not least, 
from the neighbourhood of Siegen, in Ehenish Prussia, 
including the celebrated Stahlberg, near Miisen. 
During the last few years the importance of these 
spathic ores has enormously increased, owing to the 
growing demand for spiegeleisen — indispensable to 
the manufacture of Bessemer steel. 

Proceeding from the geology, chemistry, distribu- 
tion, and value of the raw material, to the varied 
j)rocesses employed in reducing iron from the ore, the 
visitor finds this part of the subject profusely illus- 
trated. The metallurgical specimens in the East 
Indian cases are full of interest. " Wootz," or Indian 
steel, is manufactured by the natives chiefly from 
magnetic ores. The smelting apparatus is very rude 
— consisting of a small open furnace, in which the ore 
is disposed in layers of smaU pieces alternating with 
layers of charcoal. The blast is provided by two 
small bellows made of goat-skins, and the metal when 
reduced falls into a hole at the bottom of the furnace 
and forms a cake of malleable iron. *' To convert 



256 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

this into ^wootz,' a small wedge is cut from the iron 
cake and placed with pieces of dry wood in a clay 
crucible, which is heated in a rude furnace until the 
iron becomes carbonized." On breaking open the 
crucible the steel is found at the bottom in the form 
of the small conical cakes exhibited in case 38. The 
quantity of iron 2')roduced in this primitive way would 
provoke a smile from the lords of many blast-furnaces. 
In Oldham's Eeport on the Damoodah Valley, 1852, 
when East Indian iron-making was more actively 
pursued than at the present time, it is stated that the 
whole district employed 70 furnaces, producing nearly 
2380 tons of pig-iron per annum ! 

After the model-room, containing models of blast- 
furnaces and blowing engines, has been inspected, the 
numerous specimens of English pig-iron demand 
attention. Here are samples of hot and of cold 
blast pig — grey, mottled, and white — from the White- 
haven Works in Cumberland, from the Lowmoor, 
Bowling, and Farnley Works in Yorkshire, from the 
Kussell's Hall Works in South Staffordshire, from the 
Plymouth, Dowlais, and Maesteg Works in Glamorgan- 
shire, and from Monklands, Lanarkshire. 

The interesting process of steel-making may be 
studied to great advantage at the Museum of Practical 
Geology. At the north end of the museum is a model 
of a Shefdeld steel manufactory, including furnaces,., 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 257 

rolling mills, and forge ; and not far from this is one 
of the most beautifully executed models in existence. 
It represents the whole apparatus employed in making 
Bessemer steel, and, previous to its presentation to the 
Museum by Mr. Bessemer, was exhibited at the Inter- 
national Exhibition at Paris, in 1867, where it gained 
a prize. This model alone would repay a visit to 
Jermyn Street. Numerous specimens of mild steel 
are exhibited, and one stand contains specimens of 
every variety of steel sent into the market. Every 
stage of manufacture is illustrated. There is the 
puddled and rolled iron bar — recarbonized by "cement- 
ation " — and then known as "blister steel," while 
near at hand are specimens of blister steel, which, by 
various welding processes, have been advanced to the 
condition of "half shear," "single shear," "double 
shear," and "faggot steel." Fine blocks of cast steel 
revive the agreeable thought that the very difficult 
trade of making cast steel has at last revived. The 
manufacture of sheet and bar steel is not overlooked, 
nor are specimens wanting to indicate the various 
processes of hardening and tempering. In case 41 is 
found an interesting series of specimens of steel at the 
different colours for tempering. Beautiful samples of 
steel springs are shown. One of these — a miniature 
spring for a tiny watch — weighs but 0*125 of a grain 
— and being commercially worth about 25s., was used 

s 



258 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

by Babbage as an illustration of the value of labour. 
Here is indeed an instance of an inappreciable and 
almost invisible quantity of material acquiring a high 
value simply from the time and labour spent in its 
production. 

Whitworth's screws and plates are also wonderful 
examples of technical skill. The celebrated plates are 
of considerable weight, but when the two iron planes 
are brought together, and the air between them 
expelled by simple pressure, the cohesive force of the 
two surfaces is so great that the plates may be lifted 
from the ground by the handle of the upper one — a 
conclusive proof of the correctness with which the 
surfaces have been formed. Near these triumphs of 
accurate workmanship are some fine examples of 
Berhn iron castings. Many beautiful specimens also 
come from the ironworks of Count de Stolberg- 
Wernigerode, at Ilsenburg, Hartz Mountains. One 
large ornamental casting is exhibited with the sand 
attached as it was taken from the mould. 

In table-case 48 is a fine collection of ancient and 
modern Oriental and Western sword-blades. Swords 
and daggers from the Punjaub, Ispahan, and Borneo 
repose peacefully side by side with the blades of 
Damascus and Toledo, and the masterpieces of sword- 
making said to have been tempered by Andrea Ferrara 
in the remote solitude of a Highland glen. From the 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 259 

■earliest periods Oriental sword-blades have been justly- 
celebrated. Among these the Damascus blades held 
the first rank and were remarkable for their keenness 
of edge, great flexibility, a peculiar waviness or flecki- 
ness always observed on the surface, and a musky 
odour said to be given out on the blade being bent or 
rubbed. 

Without attempting to cut the knotty arguments 
with which the Damascus question is involved, I may 
simply say that the excellence of Eastern blades is 
easily accounted for. In the East people are not in a 
hurry. Over their wonderful textile fabrics and on 
their hammered metal, they are content to forget that 
there is such a thing as time. Even unto this day 
the excellent iron ores of Asia are reduced by char- 
coal, and, although I know this remark to be absurd 
from a commercial point of view, I am not afraid to 
say that things made singly and by hand — without 
regard to time — are very likely to be better in quality 
than those turned out by the thousand. The system 
does not "pay," I suppose; but I have my doubts 
whether work of the best kind, honestly, con- 
scientiously, and thoroughly performed, does often 
actually "pay" in immediate hard cash. I have 
seen two or three specimens of metal-work, produced 
in these latter days, which have occupied ten years of 
a man's life to complete. The artifex was paid an 



260 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

immense price, but let us think of the time occupied 
in earning the money ! The result is work unequalled, 
unapproachable, but whether it literally, and in a 
vulgar sense, ''paid" the patient toiler for the time 
and genius expended is very doubtful. 

In case 13 is shown the modern process of sword 
manufacture as practised at Birmingham. From 
Sheffield comes a large quantity of bars of steel called 
" sword-moulds." To the mould is fastened the tang, 
which is of iron. The result of the different stages of 
forging is very clearly shown, and also the effect of 
tempering the blade by drawing it through the fire 
several times until the surface exhibits a bluish 
oxidation. Another very interesting case is that 
illustrating the development of a first-class gun-barrel 
from a heap of horse-shoe nails. Great care is devoted 
to the arrangement of this case, and the advance of 
nails to bars, the twisting of these on a mandril, and 
the subsequent welding and boring operations are 
beautifully illustrated. 

Less important metals than iron have received 
equally conscientious treatment at the hands of Mr. 
Hunt, Mr. Trenham Eeeks, and Mr. Eudler, who are 
deservedly proud of the masterly arrangement of the 
Museum. Copper may be traced from the yellow, 
purple, and grey copper ores through all the complex 
processes of smelting to the evolution of bar copper,. 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 261 

.and the conversion of this into sheets. The malle- 
ability of copper is also well shown in a fine series of 
examples of the gradual development of a copper vase 
of elegant form from a disc of metal. A magnificent 
mass of native copper is also to be seen. The frequent 
occurrence of virgin malleable copper has been 
advanced by many writers on metals as a reason why 
•copper was employed for many ages before iron. 

Unfortunately for this theory it has recently been 
shown that iron was in use in Egypt at the time of 
the Pharoahs, and in India from time immemorial; 
while an Assyrian tripod ring in the Museum of 
Practical Geology (case 20) demonstrates, to the satis- 
faction of Dr. Percy, that the bronze had been cast 
round a support of iron, by which means the appear- 
ance of lightness was attained, and great strength 
was ensured. Advocates of the new theory assert, with 
great plausibility, that the rapid oxidation of iron 
explains its absence from very ancient monuments. 

In like manner the processes employed in the 
reduction of other metals are profusely illustrated in 
a series of cases. Superb specimens of the raw 
material are shown, among which I may cite a very 
instructive piece of a lead vein from the Grassington 
mines in Yorkshire, and a portion of a vein of gold- 
bearing quartz from Grass Valley, Nevada County, 
•California. 



262 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

A large horse-shoe case in the first gallery con> 
tains a classified collection of the minerals once desig- 
nated non-metalliferous. Chief among these rank the- 
diamond and the *' black diamond." A superb snuff- 
box, presented to the late Sir Eoderick Murchison by 
the Emperor Nicholas of Eussia, and bequeathed by 
the recipient to the Museum, occupies a place of 
honour among many other specimens of pure carbon. 
Less beautiful, but far more important than the 
diamond, is the great modern motive power — coal. The 
varieties of coal form a regular series, commencing 
with hard coal, or anthracite, and passing through 
the ordinary bituminous coals to the more recently- 
formed lignite. Here are numerous specimens of true 
anthracite, of cannel coal, lignite, and jet, of the 
curious mineral known as Bog-Head cannel, and of 
Kimmeridge coal and other hydro-carbons, such as 
asphalt, elaterite, and amber. Considerable space is- 
devoted to coal and to the method of "winning" it- 
There are models of the " surface workings of a 
Newcastle coalpit," of the " Shipley Colliery in Derby- 
shire," and of the different modes of working and 
ventilating coal mines. In addition to these are 
found one of Eidley and Co's coal-cutting machines,, 
and siDecimens of the tools employed in various 
mining districts. Immediately above the coal-cutting, 
machine is an interesting collection of ancient. Saxon 



THE MUSEUM OF PBACTICAL GEOLOGY. 263 

mining axes, richly ornamented. These formed the 
badges of office among the chief miners, and were 
only carried on State occasions. It is curious to trace 
the gradual steps by which a miner's axe became by 
degrees more highly ornamented and reduced in 
weight, until at length the ancient axe shrank to the 
dimensions of a practicable walking stick — a mere 
wand of office. 

In case 5, in the model room, is a complete collec- 
tion of mining lamps, showing the inventions of Davy 
and Stephenson, and the improvements subsequently 
made in them, among which is the remarkable 
magnet-lamp invented to prevent the miner from 
opening his lamp to light his pipe. 

In the upper gallery is a fine collection of British 
fossils, admirably arranged for the use of students; 
but it is impossible to do more than allude to the 
numerous objects of interest in the Museum of Practi- 
cal Geology. Several cases in the haU are filled with 
polished cubes of British ornamental stones, collected 
to assist the deliberations of the Building- Stone Com- 
missioners appointed to select the best possible stone 
for building the present Houses of Parliament. An 
immense deal of trouble was taken in testing the 
physical and chemical properties of the various stones, 
but the selection arrived at can hardly be designated 
a success. Another most interesting relic is a portion 



264 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of the boulder-stone used for the sarcophagus of the 
late Duke of Wellington. A huge boulder had long 
lain supine in a field in Cornwall, to the despair of the 
farmer, who on several occasions proposed to blow it 
up, but was deterred by the menaces of the country 
folk, who, by addressing him thus — "If thee shoots 
that, we'll shoot thee," succeeded in preserving the 
stone to fulfil its great destiny. A series of handsome 
busts adorns the hall of the Museum. Appropriately 
carved in stone are the counterfeit presentments of 
great geologists. An important addition to the busts 
of Smith, Playfair, De la Beche, Buckland, and 
Murchison, has recently been presented to the Museum 
by a generous lady. This is a magnificent marble 
bust of the late Professor Sedgwick, by Woolner — one 
of the happiest efforts of that eminent sculptor. Out 
of the main track of the visitor is a curious and 
valuable collection, illustrative of the progress of fictile 
industry in this country and abroad. The ceramic 
and vitreous series contains specimens of Bovey clay, 
Poole clay, China stone, and the famous Kaolin, China 
or Cornish clay, to the introduction of which the 
beauty of porcelain is mainly to be attributed. Speci- 
mens of raw material and of various kinds of porce- 
lain and pottery, in different stages of manufacture, 
are arranged on the symmetrical plan carried out in 
every other department; but, albeit proud of their 



THE MUSEUM OF PRACTICAL GEOLOGY. 265 

lianclsome collection of china and glass, tlie courteous 
officers of the institution confess with sorrow that 
perhaps their well-meant efforts have contributed to 
excite the present absurd mania for crockery. 

The Museum is open gratuitously to the public on 
Mondays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., 
and on the other days of the week (Friday excepted) 
during the usual hours. There is one month of 
vacation, from the 10th August to the 10th September, 
when the Museum is entirely closed. 

The edifice contains a library of 15,000 volumes, 
devoted to the sciences taught in the School of Mines. 
These are available for the use of students in the 
School, and also, ui^on special application, stating the 
object in view, may be consulted by other inquirers. 

Taken altogether, the institution in Jermyn Street 
is admirable. As a " show "it is full of interest and 
entertainment, but considered in its more important 
aspect as an engine of direct instruction, it not only 
excites admiration at its perfect arrangement, but 
wonder that no greater haste is made to follow the 
excellent example set by the Museum of Practical 
Geology. 



266 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



XII. 

THE BEITISH ASSOCIATION FOE THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 

Forasmuch as the British Association is only con- 
spicuous in London by its absence, and holds its meet- 
ings everywhere but in the metropolis, it can hardly 
be included under the title of " Scientific London." 
Still, when I reflect that much of the work of this 
important body is done on the banks of the Thames, 
and that committee meetings take place in Albemarle 
Street, while the great holiday gatherings are reserved 
for the provinces, I cannot refrain from mentioning a 
society of special type, which has exercised enormous 
influence in disseminating and fostering a natural 
taste for every branch of science. 

With the advent of the spirit of scientific investiga- 
tion arose the idea that while the formation of special 
societies would assist the development of particular 
branches of study, some great catholic association 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 267 

should promote the general advance of science in this, 
country. For a long while this duty was fulfilled by 
the Koyal Society. From the collection of detached 
facts and observations this august body advanced at 
length to the pursuit of knowledge of all kinds, and 
accepting communications on every branch of science, . 
filled the important position of supreme arbiter of the 
scientific circles of England. 

But in time the limbs grew too numerous and too 
ponderous for the parent trunk, and were lopped off 
one by one. The Society of Antiquaries disposed of 
one class of communications, and the Linnsean 
Society, the Geological and Eoyal Astronomical 
Societies successively reduced the area of the Royal 
Society's work. Meanwhile scientific knowledge ad- 
vanced and entirely new sciences sprang into existence. 

At the commencement of the present century the 
brilliant discoveries and attractive lectures of Davy 
had forced from society a species of recognition, while 
the extraordinary development of the steam-engine, 
and the increasing trade in dyes and other " chemi- 
cals," had brought home to the commercial mind the 
importance of scientific knowledge. It became recog- 
nized that the very existence of England depends on 
her being second to no other nation in the prompt 
application of scientific discoveries and scientific 
method to the gigantic industries for which this little 



268 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

island is celebrated. For a while the antagonistic 
influence of two widely separated sections of society- 
was severely felt. On the part of the great Univer- 
sities a positive dislike was shown to the introduction 
of science into education. At the University of Oxford, 
the elegant — but utterly useless — trick of composing 
Greek and Latin verse was considered of sufficient 
importance to occuj^y several of the most valuable 
years of a man's life; while at Cambridge — invested 
with scientific glory by the immortal Newton — 
although mathematical science enjoyed a certain 
prominence, its study was almost exclusively regarded 
as a mere training of the understanding, a species of 
mental gymnastics fitted to harden the logical facul- 
ties as practice in the eight-oar hardens and develops 
the muscles. As an instrument for the discovery of 
new truths, mathematics were entirely disregarded, 
and Cambridge was content to let science be where 
it was left by the great philosopher who described 
himself as a child picking up shells by the shore of 
the ocean of truth. Those impressed with the value 
of a scientific education, groaned over the Oxford 
graduate, whose proficiency in the dead languages was 
compensated by complete ignorance of the elementary 
principles of a telescope, a barometer, or a steam- 
engine, and declared that unless scientific study were 
made compulsory as an integral part of an university 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. '269 

education, neither Oxford nor Cambridge would ever 
become the scene of scientific investigation. 

We all now know how science has triumphed over 
her foes in the Universities, but it is deeply interest- 
ing to consider how much progress has been retarded 
on the other hand by the so-called "practical man." 
Whether a general officer or a blacksmith, the 
"practical man" sternly opposed any application 
of theoretical knowledge to his peculiar profession. 
The natural buU-headedness of Englishmen made the 
English practical man peculiarly offensive. It was 
often asked, " Of what use is science ? " and the head 
of a great military department once declared openly 
that he "hated scientific officers," while it was but 
too well known that in his own department more 
money had been wasted and more lives lost — from sheer 
ignorance of science — "than any one could think of 
without shame and sorrow." Another general officer 
— as if to justify Fielding's remarks on the military 
cranium — gave it as his opinion that "theoretical 
knowledge was not necessary in the army. An officer 
might be a good officer without any education at all."" 

In the industrial world a like feeling j)revailed. 
Dr. Lyon Playfair declared that the title of "practical 
man" was erroneously used by Englishmen to envelop 
their ignorance, and that reliance on the "practical 
or common sense of our population is the sunken 



'270 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

rock directly in the course both of our agriculture 
and manufactures." Dr. Lyon Playfair continued 
in the following terms: — "If England keeps pace 
with other countries as a manufacturing nation, it 
must be by her sons of industry becoming humble 
disciples of science. Now that the progress of human 
events has converted the competition of industry into 
a competition of intellect, it will no longer do to 
plume and pride ourselves on our power of mere 
practical adaptation. It is miserable to see our 
industrial population glorying in their ignorance of 
the principles on which their manufactures depend, 
and vaunting their empiricism, or, as they term it, 
their practice." 

The importance of applying the faculties of observa- 
tion and reasoning to the problems of nature is also 
proclaimed by Sir John Herschel, who says, "The 
abstract sciences are the concentration of what has 
been established as true in the operations of nature — 
they are so much of certainty acquired in the midst 
of uncertainty. When sufficiently advanced to be 
directly applicable to the industrial and other arts 
they convert the crawl of improvement into a race." 
Theory may, then, be defined as a species of rule of 
■which practice is merely the example; but, for all 
that, is yet at a discount in this country, where people 
love to ignore their obligations to such " theorists " as 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 271 

Newton, Watt, Stephen Gray, and Davy, and to exalt 
to the skies the ''practical men" who blundered and 
muddled on for thousands of years without achieving 
any great improvement, and would probably have 
gone on stumbling for ever had not the gloomy regions 
of practice been illumined by the light of theory. 

The influence of the numerous learned societies in 
encouraging observation and diffusing a philosophical 
spirit, the efforts of the Eoyal Society to excite interest 
in purely scientific subjects, and the excellent work 
done by the Society of Arts in showing the intimate 
connection between science and industry, failed to 
secure national appreciation until steam communica- 
tion and the rapid transmission of news by degrees 
made men aware of the enormous losses of life and 
property annually suffered from sheer want of 
scientific knowledge. Pending the more general 
appreciation of the advantages of scientific culture, a 
discussion arose, between the years 1826 and 1831, on 
the low state of science and scientific men in England. 

To Sir David Brewster is undoubtedly due the 
origin of the British Association, but the original con- 
ception of a Scientific Parliament is purely German, 
and was simply imported into this country by the great 
northern philosopher. In 1822 Dr. Oken, of Munich, 
originated the idea of an annual congress of scientific 
men, with the object of bringing them into personal 



272 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

contact. The first meeting was held at Leipzig, and 
was attended by only thirty-two persons, of whom 
twenty were resident in the city. The meetings, how- 
ever, rapidly increased in importance. That of 1827, 
held in Mmiich, was warmly patronised by the King^ 
of Bavaria, and in the following year the philosophers 
assembled at Berlin, on which occasion they were 
warmly welcomed by the King and presided over by 
the illustrious Von Humboldt. Babbage was the only 
Englishman present, and communicated an interesting 
account of the Scientific Congress to the Edinhurgh 
Journal of Science. 

Intelligent foreigners had long remarked the slender 
estimation in which science and its votaries were held 
in England, and by the efforts of Sir Humphry Davy,. 
Sir John Herschel, Sir David Brewster, and others, the 
upper stratum of national feeling was stirred up. It was 
set forth that foreign scientific institutions were greatly 
superior to those in existence in England, and the 
decline of scientific studies among the aristocracy was 
vigorously pointed out by Davy, who remarked that, 
*'in looking back to the history of the last five reigns in 
England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes, and Howards, 
who rendered their great names more illustrious by 
their scientific renown, but we may in vain search the 
aristocracy now for philosophers ; and there are very 
few persons who pursue science with true dignity ; it 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 273 

is followed more as connected with objects of profit 
than those of fame, and there are fifty persons who 
take out patents for supjDOsed inventions for one who ^ 
makes a real discovery." In like spirit, Babbage 
exposed the prevailing ignorance of the more difficult 
and abstract sciences, and declared that mathematics 
and, with it, the highest departments of physical 
science had gradually declined since the days of 
Newton. These shortcomings were attributed to the 
abuses then existing in the management of our 
scientific institutions — the imperfect system of in- 
struction in public schools and universities — the 
ignorance of public men — and the culpable indiffer- 
ence of successive Governments to the intellectual glory 
of the country. Babbage' s onslaught was supported 
by Sir David Brewster, who, in the Quarterly Revieir, 
drew a comparison between the existing state of 
science at home and abroad, very much to the dis- 
advantage of England. At the conclusion of this 
important article, the writer — whose philosophic in- 
vestigations had extended through every branch of 
physical science — mentioned the best method for 
reviving and extending science in the British 
Islands: — ''An Association of our nobility, clergy, 
gentry, and philosophers can alone draw the attention 
of the Sovereign and the nation to this blot upon its 
fame." In 1831, through the instrumentality of Lord 



274 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Brougliam, the state of science and its followers was 
brought before Lord Grey's Government, and some 
important objects relative to the Association suggested 
by Sir David Brewster were secured. 

Early in 1831 Sir David Brewster set vigorously 
to work to establish a British Association of Men of 
Science, similar to that which had existed for eight 
years in Germany. The principal objects of the 
Society were to make the cultivators of science 
famiHar with each other, to stimulate one another to 
new exertions, to bring the objects of science before 
the public eye, and to take measures for advancing 
its interests and accelerating its progress. York was 
selected by Sir David Brewster as the locality for the 
first meeting, on the ground of its being a central 
town already provided with a Philosophical Society of 
its own. The local philosophers as well as the mayor 
and magistrates of York took up the project heartily, 
and the first meeting was attended by more than 
three hundred persons, who responded to the invita- 
tions issued by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. 
Prominent among the organizers of the movement 
were Sir Eoderick Murchison, Professor Phillips, and 
Eev. W. Vernon Harcourt in London, and Messrs. 
Eobinson, Johnston, and Forbes in Edinburgh, while 
the learned and venerable Archbishop of York entered 
warmly and hospitably into the scheme. Under the 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 275 

presidency of Lord Milton the inaugural meeting was 
held at the Museum of the York Philosophical Society, 
the British Association was duly organized; and so 
well was the important task of planning and arranging 
performed that few variations have been made from 
the original sketch. 

Thoroughly maintaining the idea of catholicity, the 
British Association contemplates no interference with 
the ground occupied by other institutions. Briefly 
stated its objects are: — To give a stronger impulse 
and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry — 
to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate 
science in different parts of the British Empire with 
one another and with foreign philosophers — to obtain 
a more general attention to the objects of science, and 
a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind 
which impede its progess. The Association meets 
annually for at least one week in some town decided 
upon two years in advance. During the forty-three 
years of its existence the members of the Association 
have indeed seen men and cities. Not only the great 
commercial centres of the kingdom, but seats of 
learning and fashionable watering-places have been 
visited. Thus Oxford, Dublin, Liverpool, York, Cam- 
bridge, Bath, Glasgow and Cheltenham, Brighton and 
Bradford, have in turn welcomed the British Associa- 
tion. On the occasion of these visits ample prepara- 



276 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

tions are made by the local authorities, and much 
hospitality dispensed. At Bradford last year, for 
instance, the city expended some i£3,000 in receiving 
and entertaining the philosophers. 

After the general meeting, at which the president- 
elect delivers an address, the general committee takes 
the business of the meeting in hand, while particular 
departments are discussed in the sections by special 
committees. The sections into which the business of 
the British Association is divided are — A. Mathe- 
matical and Physical Science. B. Chemical Science. 
C. Geology. D. Biology — subdivided into three depart^ 
ments — Anatomy and Physiology — Zoology and Botany 
— Anthroj)ology. E. Geography. F. Economic Science 
and Statistics. G. Mechanical Science. 

In these sections the proceedings of the jprevious 
annual meeting, the recommendations adopted there, 
and the action since taken upon them, are reviewed.. 
Suggestions are also made by the members, and 
definite points of research to which individual or 
combined exertion may be usefully directed, are care- 
fully selected after due discussion. Many interesting 
papers are read, and of these the most interesting 
are published in extenso in the annual report, while 
those of less importance receive the slighter honour of 
an extract. 

During the annual celebration two evenings are 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 277 

<levotecl to lectures, and one other lecture is specially 
given for the benefit of the operative classes. These 
working-man's lectures were initiated by Professor 
Tyndall, the president-elect, who at Dundee, in 1867, 
delivered a lecture on Matter and Force — an example 
followed the next year at Norwich by Professor Huxley, 
who discoursed on a Piece of Chalk in that lucid and 
charming style which endears him to the working 
classes of this country. At other meetings Sir John 
Lubbock lectured on " Savages ; " Mr. W. Spottis- 
woode on "Sun, Sea, and Sky;" and Dr. C. W. 
Siemens on "Fuel." The operatives' lecture has 
become a prominent feature of the annual meeting, 
and affords one philosopher per annum an opportunity 
of exhibiting his skill in the art of lucid exposition. 



278 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



XIII. 

THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 

Statistics, often defined as that branch of political 
science which has for its object the collecting and 
arranging of facts bearing upon the condition of a 
nation, may, perhaps, be more accurately described as 
the true basis of all political science — worthy of the 
name. Despite the denunciation of political economy 
— which is nothing if not statistical — as the "dismal 
science," and the unlovely portrait drawn of Mr. 
Gradgrind, the lover of facts — the errors into which 
the human intellect has been led by that great 
*' parent of error a priori," have been in modern times 
abundantly exposed by the stern logic of facts. It 
would, indeed, be difficult to exaggerate the influence 
exercised by statistics at the present moment over 
every department of human thought. Not only 
the physical but the moral peculiarities of mankind 
have been carefully observed and regularly tabulated. 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 279 

Events once imagined to be the result of pure accident, 
and therefore most capricious and uncertain in their 
recurrence, have been, by the patient labour of the 
statist, arranged under their proper heads, with the 
result of proving that the apparent " fortuitous con- 
course of atoms " occurs in obedience to a fixed law, 
and in sympathy with certain conditions. Strangely 
enough, the Science of Facts, that which above all 
other sciences is realistic, dry, and hard, has, accord- 
ing to the late Mr. Buckle, " thrown more light on the 
study of human nature than all the other sciences put 
together." Thus, while astronomy — perhaps the least 
erring of all sciences — has taught us to predict the 
existence of an unknown planet from the pertm-bations 
of one already known ; while physical geography has 
registered the phenomena of climate, and the dis- 
tribution of continents, oceans, and rivers — chemistry 
has weighed and analyzed the food of man, and the 
air that he breathes; and political economy has 
scientifically grappled with the difficulties presented 
by the unequal distribution of wealth ; Statistics, the 
youngest born of the sciences, has been so zealously 
cultivated, that we have already the most extensive 
information, not only respecting the material interests 
of men, but also resjDecting their moral peculiarities 
— such as the proportion of different crimes, and the 
influence exercised over them by age, sex, and educa- 



280 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

tion. Witliout attempting to predict the immense 
results which must ultimately accrue to the human 
race from this careful arrangement of facts, I cannot 
refer without a renewed feeling of astonishment to the 
grand and comprehensive inferences concerning the 
actions of men which have already been drawn from 
purely statistical sources. The statistics of crime 
in particular reveal much that is extraordinary. It 
would require no very profound philosopher to discover 
that the quantity of robbery perpetrated on the earth 
is tolerably constant. It changes in form, but the 
plundering is done all the same. The "high toby- 
man" of past days has shrunk into the skulking 
garotter ; Jack Sheppard and Bill Sykes know how to 
read and write, wear fine clothes, forge cheques, and 
make abortive attempts to "bolt with the swag" to 
the countries, if any, which have yet no extradition 
treaties. Large operators such as Eobin Hood and 
Johnny Armstrong are " in the City." They take the 
chair at board meetings, sport thick gold watch- 
chains, come down heavily with subscriptions to 
charities, and exhibit a rare public spirit, coupled 
with a princely liberality. Somebody suffers for this, 
of course; but the predatory instincts of man must 
be satisfied. All this is comprehensible enough, and 
fortifies a belief in the inherent rascality of the 
himana ; but murder might weU have been supposed 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 281 

to be one of the most arbitrary and irregular of all 
crimes. In point of fact, it is nothing of the kind. 
Murder is commited with as much regularity, and 
bears as uniform a relation to certain known chxum- 
stances as do the movements of the tides and the 
rotations of the seasons. In the words of the greatest 
statist whom the world has yet seen, "in everything 
which concerns crime, the same numbers re-occur 
with a constancy which it would be impossible to 
misunderstand, even in the case of those crimes which 
seem quite independent of human foresight, such for 
mstance as murders, which are generally committed 
after quarrels arising from circumstances apparently 
fortuitous. Nevertheless, experience proves that not 
only the same number of murders takes place every 
year, but that even the instruments by which they 
are committed are employed in the same proportion." 
This language was used in 1835 by the illustrious 
thinker who spent his useful life in collecting and 
methodizing the statistics of different countries. Later 
inquiries have confirmed these generalizations so 
completely as to have induced the observation that 
*'the uniform reproduction of crime is more clearly 
marked and more capable of being predicted than are 
the physical laws connected with the disease and 
destruction of our bodies." Suicide, apparently the 
most eccentric of crimes, and that w^hich depends 



282 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

more than any other upon individual will, and less 
upon surrounding circumstances, has been shown to 
be merely the product of the general condition of 
society: "All appears to depend upon predetermined 
causes. Thus we find yearly almost the same number 
of suicides, not only in general, but in distinguishing 
sex, age, and methods of self-destruction. One year 
reproduces so faithfully the figures of the year which 
preceded it that it is possible to predict what will 
happen the year after." But it is not only the graver 
crimes of mankind that are marked by a terrible 
uniformity of sequence. Minor indiscretions follow 
the same iron law. Marriage was once supposed to 
be determined by the temper and caprice of indi- 
viduals, but the statist has shown that the number of 
marriages annually contracted is determined not by 
Jack and Jill but by large general facts over which 
obscure units exercise slight authority. 

Marriages are now known to bear a fixed and 
definite relation to the price of corn, and "the ex- 
perience of a century has proved that, instead of 
having any connection with personal feelings, they 
are simply regulated by the average earnings of the 
great mass of the people ; so that this immense social 
and religious institution is not only swayed but com- 
pletely controlled by the price of food and the rate of 
wages." Another curious instance is the necessary 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 283 

and invariable order of aberration of memory. Twenty 
years ago the post-of&ces of London and Paris pub- 
lished returns of the number of letters which the 
T\Titers, through forgetfulness, had omitted to direct, 
and the result has been a proof that, year after year, 
the same proportion of letter-writers forget this simple 
act; so that, for each successive period, we can 
actually foretell the number of persons whose memory 
will fail them in directing a letter, with a near 
approach to the accm-acy with which we can predict 
the occurrence of an eclipse or the advent of a comet. 
To statists, then, belongs the merit of first disclos- 
ing the action of great general laws upon the moral 
as well as on the physical world, by bringing to bear 
upon it that powerful engine for eliciting truth — the 
science of numbers. Mainly emplo3^ed in investi- 
gating the condition of man himself, the statist 
leaves the distribution of land and water to the geo- 
grapher, the constitution of the earth's crust to the 
geologist, the description of man, as an individual 
organism, to the physiologist, his position in contrast 
to that of other animals to the anthropologist, his 
relation to other races of men to the ethnologist, and 
concerns himself with man, viewed as a citizen and a 
proprietor. The principle lying at the foundation of 
statistics is, then, that the laws which govern nature, 
and more especially those which determine the moral 



284 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

.and physical condition of mankind, are constant, and 
are to be discovered by the accurate and patient 
investigation and comparison of phenomena extending 
■over a large number of instances. Accidental diver- 
-sities diminish in importance as -the area of investiga- 
tion is increased, and if this be sufficiently extended, 
they so nearly disappear altogether as to be unworthy 
of serious regard. Two familiar instances may be 
c[uoted of the application of these truths — the theory 
■of probabilities, based on an accurate observation of 
gambling, in which luck is supposed to inhere ; and 
the construction of life insurance tables, based upon 
calculations wide enough to reduce the proverbial 
uncertainty of life to an actual and negotiable com- 
modity. 

The word "statistics" was first employed in the 
middle of the last century by Professor Achenwall, of 
Gottingen, who is considered by some the founder of 
the science, but before his time separate branches of 
statistics had been ably treated by various writers. 
From an early date the "dismal science" had attracted 
the attention of the " gloomy English." Towards the 
.close of the seventeenth and at the commencement 
-of the eighteenth century Eeynolds, Child, and Pretty 
published valuable information relating to the com- 
merce, manufacture, and finance of this country. At 
-a later period Price, Arthur Young, and Chalmers 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 285' 

treated tlie subject of population with great ability. 
Young left a monument of his talent^ and industry in 
his various publications relating to agriculture, and 
Playfair's work on commerce has a high reputation. 
Within the space of a year the claims of John Howard, 
the philanthropist, to high rank as a statist have been 
eloquently advocated by Dr. Guy. Howard's fame as 
a philanthropist and martyr is deservedly so great 
that we are apt to overlook the means by which he 
succeeded in impressing an obdurate generation with 
the wrongs of prisoners. In 1773, when he was 
appointed Sheriff of Bedford, the prisons of this 
country were a disgrace to a nation with any pre- 
tension to civilization. Prisons were private pro- 
perty, and gaolers lived by fees levied with sublime 
impartiality on the innocent and on the guilty. In 
the same patient persevering spirit with which, seven- 
teen years before, he liberated his fellow-cax^tives in 
France, and reformed the treatment of prisoners of 
war, Howard set about improving the condition of tlie^ 
deplorable creatures then imprisoned in the ''bride- 
wells" of England. It is more than probable that 
had he contented himself with investigating one or 
two especially flagrant cases he might have succeeded 
in creating a "passing sensation," even in the languid 
public opinion of his day, but it is clearly impossible 
that a mere statement of a few aggravated cases would 



286 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

have had sufficient influence to stimulate legislative 
action. With the mind of a statist, as well as the 
heart of a philanthropist, he set about collecting that 
mass of evidence which produced the two Acts of 
1774. He started on a new tour of inspection into the 
counties he had lately visited, and examining, not the 
bridewells only, but the houses of correction, and the 
city and town gaols, made acquaintance with the 
terrible gaol distemper, and its scarcely less formid- 
able associate, confluent small-pox. Fortified by a 
mass of frightful details, he was prepared, the year 
after his shrievalty, to give that evidence before a 
Committee of the House of Commons which, by its 
tremendous accumulation and arrangement of facts, 
•startled a horror-struck Legislature into immediate 
action. Complete inquiry, and the consequent number 
of facts, carried the day ; and the victory which might 
have been denied to the philanthropist, was achieved 
with comparative ease by the statist, who, armed at 
•all points, bore down opposition by sheer weight of 
-evidence. 

Strange to say, the success of the good man who 
achieved the greatest single-handed victory in the 
j)arliamentary history of England failed to awake the 
national mind to the value of method. Detached 
efforts were made from time to time, among which 
may be cited Sir John Sinclair's '' Statistical Account 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 287 

of Scotland," and Colquhoun's "Treatise on the 
Wealth, Power, and Kesources of the British Empire," 
but the systematic arrangement of facts required the 
magic imprint of the genius of generalization before it 
could take rank as a regular science. 

This work of crystallizing scattered rows of figui-es 
into a solid science was performed by one great mind. 
On the 22nd of February, 1796, was born at Ghent, 
Adolphe Quetelet, who, after living to construct the 
Science of Statistics, died full of years and honour, in 
the corresponding month of the present jeai. At an 
early age he became Professor of Mathematics in his 
native town, and in 1820 was admitted to the Brussels 
Academy of Sciences and Letters, which, chiefly owing 
to his endeavours, expanded into the Pioyal Academy 
of Belgium. From an early period, he devoted 
himself to the study of numbers, and produced, at 
different times, works on the theory of probabilities, 
the Statistique Criminelle and the Physique Morale. In 
these famous works, which appeared before 1835, he 
announced opinions which astounded the world, but 
have since been amply verified by constant investiga- 
tion. By a masterly aiDplication of the inductive 
system to moral and social problems, he educed, from 
a vast collection of isolated facts, generalizations 
which amazed the world of his day to the full as much 
as the conclusions of physical philosophers had 



288 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

startled and terrified preceding generations. Striking 
boldly at the barren province of metaphysical specula- 
tion, he reduced the most incomprehensible acts of 
human bemgs to a fixed law. 

Immediately before the appearance of his great 
works the theories of Quetelet were bruited abroad, 
and the attention of the thinkers of England was 
awakened to the value of the new science that he had 
created. The British Association at once perceived 
the importance of figures scientifically handled, and 
suggested, with excellent insight, the formation of a 
society which should devote itself to the study of 
statistics. One of the earliest to identify himself with 
the movement was the veteran Malthus. This 
singularly clear and powerful thinker, who had 
startled, if not shocked, England a quarter of a 
century before by his able "Essay on the Principles 
of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement 
of Society," at once saw that he had lived long enough 
to encounter a generation capable of appreciating him. 
During the travels in which his early manhood was 
passed, he — struck by Hume's "Essay on the Popu- 
lousness of Ancient Nations" — had perceived the 
importance of applying numbers as a test of historical 
truth. From remote periods vague statements had 
been made as to the vast multitudes of human beings 
subsisting in certain places, or wandering from spot 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 289 

to spot in the course of their periodical migrations. 
On testing the means of subsistence at the disposal 
of these peoples, many calculations, previously re- 
ceived with implicit faith, proved devoid of reasonable 
foundation. The application of the food test to 
ancient populations produced a similar effect to the 
application of chemistry to organic matter. From the 
materials at his disposal Malthus argued with irre- 
sistible logic, nor could he — when he anticipated the 
poverty of England, for the reason that the population 
increased in geometrical while the food-producing 
power of the country only increased in arithmetical 
progression — be expected to anticipate the enormous 
revolution destined to be brought about by free trade, 
and increased facilities for communication. 

Perceiving at once the potency of a science which 
fused scattered and apparently discordant elements 
into one harmonious whole, Charles Babbage, the 
famous inventor of the calculating machine, threw 
himself warmly into the project for founding the new 
society. Impressed with the idea that what formerly 
had been done by the unaided work of human brains 
could be accomplished by machinery, he had devoted 
not only a great part of his valuable life, but ^620, 000 
of his own money, to the perfection of the remarkable 
engine which bears his name. At this time at the 
zenith of his fame, he perceived, with that broadness 



290 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

of view which so eminently characterized him, the 
importance of the budget of facts which Quetelet had 
communicated to the British Association, and for 
which no place could be found in any section. At the 
instance of Babbage, the committee of the Statistical 
Section of the British Association met at his house, 
and at once determined on the establishment of a 
society devoted to the collection and elaboration of 
Statistics alone. 

On the 15th March, 1834, was founded the Statisti- 
cal Society of London, for the purpose of procuring, 
arranging, and publishing "Facts calculated to illus- 
trate the condition and prospects of society.'* The 
Statistical Society considered it to be the first and 
most essential rule of its conduct to exclude carefully 
all opinions from its transactions and publications, to 
confine its attention rigorously to facts, and, as far as 
might be found possible, to facts stated numerically 
and arranged in tables. By the provisional committee 
— composed of Henry Hallam, Charles Babbage, 
Eichard Jones, and John Elliot Drinkwater — was 
endorsed the opinion previously expressed by the 
Statistical Section of the British Association at Cam- 
bridge — that the whole subject admitted a division 
into four great classes — (1) economical statistics ; (2) 
political statistics ; (3) medical statistics ; (4) moral 
and intellectual statistics. Further analysis revealed 
that — 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 291 

Economical statistics comprehend — (1) the statistics 
of the natural productions and the agriculture of 
nations ; (2) of manufacture ; (3) of commerce and 
cm-rency ; (4) of the distribution of wealth, or all facts 
relating to rent, wages, and profits, etc. 

Political statistics furnish three subdivisions — (1) 
the facts relating to the elements of political institu- 
tions, the number of electors, jurors, etc. ; (2) legal 
statistics ; (3) the statistics of finance and of national 
expenditure, and of civil and military establishments. 

Medical statistics, strictly so called, require at least 
two subdivisions, and the great subject of population 
may also be conveniently classed as a subdivision of 
medical statistics. 

Moral and intellectual statistics were held to include 
— (1) the statistics of literature ; (2) of education ; 
(3) of religious instruction and ecclesiastical institu- 
tions ; (4) of crime. 

To these four great divisions and their fourteen 
subdivisions the various departments of statistics were 
declared to be referrible, but it is also stated that in 
all probability more would be required. 

The provisional committee, who did their work in a 
style worthy of their great reputation, added to the 
analysis just quoted a large number of valuable 
suggestions, which have all been adopted from time 
to time by Fellows of the Society. It was recom- 



292 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

mended that immediate communication should be 
opened with the statistical department established by 
Government at the Board of Trade. Inquiry was 
to be stimulated both at home and abroad, and 
relations were to be cultivated with all societies 
having objects bearing upon statistical research. It 
was suggested that not only new, but old statistics 
might advantageously be collected, arranged, con- 
densed, and published. The archives of the East 
India Company were indicated as a storehouse whence 
immense quantities of valuable material might be 
drawn, and the pursuit of statistics in the Colonies 
and other countries, wherein society was starting from 
a tabula rasa, was warmly recommended. 

The work of the Society being thus somewhat 
limited and defined, the committee proceeded ta 
consider the best means, fi.rstly, of collecting fresh 
statistical information, and secondly of arranging, 
condensing, and publishing that already in existence.. 
On the method of collecting information, the com- 
mittee expressed itself in the following luminous and 
suggestive paragraph : — " Towards collecting fresh 
statistical information, the first step, in order both of 
time and importance, would be the arrangement of a 
good set of interrogatories, to be drawn up under the 
superintendence of the sub-committees, and afterwards 
examined, sanctioned, and cii'culated by the CounciL- 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 293 

'The careful execution of this task is essential, both to 
.afford guidance and aid to individual inquiries and 
to protect the Society against the influx of imperfect 
or irrelevant statements. Willing agents of inquiry 
exist in abundance quite ready to aid in collecting 
materials ; but few of these agents take a very wide 
view of all the objects of statistical inquiry, and indeed 
few have very distinct notions about the precise inform- 
ation the Society may wish to collect, even as to any 
one object. To sketch, therefore, by means of inter- 
rogatories carefully and succinctly drawn, the whole 
outlines which it is wished to fill up, is the only way 
to secure to the Society the full benefit to be expected 
from their zeal. It is difficult to overrate the import- 
ance of the step which will be made towards the 
accumulation of statistical knowledge from all quarters 
of the globe, by the publication of such a set of ques- 
tions ; but the operation will be as laborious as it is 
important. It properly may, and probably will, form 
the chief object of the exertions of the Council during 
the first year of the Society's existence." 

Immediately on its foundation the Society presented 
an imposing appearance, due not only to the number 
- — 398 — of original Fellows, but to the important 
names figuring on the list. The Marquis of Lans- 
downe was the fii'st president ; Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord 
;Sandon, Sir Charles Lemon, and Lieutenant-Colonel 



294 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Sykes, vice-presidents ; the immortal historian of the* 
Middle Ages figured as treasurer, and Messrs. Drink- 
water, Greig, and Maclean as secretaries. Among the 
Council are the names of Charles Bahbage, John. 
Buckle, the Bishop of London (Blomfield), Samuel 
Jones Lloyd (afterwards Lord Overstone), G. E- 
Porter, John Tidd Pratt, George Poulett Scrope, 
Nassau Senior, Thomas Tooke, and "William WhewelL. 
One foreign Fellow only appears on the first list of the 
Statistical Society, but this one was no other than 
the illustrious Adolphe Quetelet. Many names which 
were at that time, or have since become, famous,, 
follow those great pioneers of statistical science 
Among these may be cited the late Baron Alderson, 
Eichard Bethell (afterwards Lord Westbury), the late 
Lord Brougham, Mark Isambard Brunei (afterwards 
knighted), I. K. Brunei — the champion of the broad- 
gauge, and designer of the Great Eastern steamship — 
John Bonham Carter, Edwin Chadwick, Francis 
Chantrey, the late Lord Denman, William Ewart 
Gladstone, George Grote, Joseph Hume, Charles 
Knight, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Shaw Lefevre, J. E. 
McCulloch, Sir Francis Palgrave, the late Baron 
Parke, John Murray, Ashurst Majendie, Lord Minto^ 
Sir Harris Nicolas, Sylvain Van de Weyer, E. Yernon 
Smith, M. Eicardo, Lord John (now Earl) Eussell^, 
Henry Ker Seymer, and the Duke of Somerset.. 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 295 

In addition to a long roll of remarkable men, the 
Statistical Society now numbers among its Fellows 
two most distinguished ladies — whom, in despite of 
custom and prejudice, it has deemed worthy of elec- 
tion. The names of Florence Nightingale and of the 
Baroness Burdett Coutts add no small lustre to the 
Society, which has by their election vindicated its 
claim to stand foremost in the van of progress. 

As might have been expected, a body backed by a 
superabundance of brain power increased rapidly in 
numbers and importance. The labours of Quetelet 
cast a halo of glory about the new Society, and the 
steady toil of its members supplied admirable papers 
and discussions. Throughout the whole course of an 
eminently successful career the Society has never 
sought either Government subsidy or Eoyal patronage, 
except in the case of the late Prince Consort, himself 
a pupil of Quetelet. Following the steps of his illus- 
trious father, His Eoyal Highness the Prince of Wales 
is now the Honorary President of the Society, the 
actual presidential chair having been recently occupied 
by Lord Houghton, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Newmarch, 
and Dr. Farr. At the present moment this dignified 
position is admh'ably filled by Dr. Guy. Owing to 
the independent attitude of the Society it has never 
been incorporated by Eoyal Charter, and does not 
enjoy, like many learned bodies, the advantage of 



296 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

sumptuous apartments in Burlington House. Not 
long since the Society, feeling crippled in its narrow 
precincts in St. James's Square, set on foot a project 
for building a stately edifice at Westminster, to form 
a home for learned societies, but so many of these 
have found accommodation at Burlington House, that 
the " Statistical " is left almost alone in its glory, and 
has migrated from St. James's Square in company 
with its faithful ally, the "Institute of Actuaries," to 
the house in King's College recently vacated by the 
principal of the College, Canon Barry. The last 
session was marked by the action of the Council in 
giving effect to the views of the President, Dr. Guy, 
regarding John Howard and his claim to be considered 
as much a statist as -a philanthropist, by establishing 
the Howard medal — a bronze trophy — to be given 
every year to the author of the best essay on some 
subject in social statistics. 

The subject of the essay for which the medal will 
be given in 1874 (the centenary of the year in which 
Howard achieved his parliamentary triumph) is " The 
State of Prisons, and the Condition and Treatment of 
Prisoners in the Prisons of England and Wales, during 
the last half of the eighteenth century, as set forth 
in Howard's ' State of Prisons,' and his work on 
* Lazarettos.' " 

The subject for 1875 is " The State of the Dwel- 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 297 

lings of the Poor in the Eural Districts of England, 
with special regard to the improvements that have 
been made since the middle of the eighteenth century, 
and their influence on the health and morals of their 
inmates." 

The "Proceedings" are embodied in the Journal of 
the Statistical Society, where also are found papers 
read at important gatherings, such as statistical con- 
gresses, and at the annual meeting of the British 
Association. Obituary notices and reviews are also 
included in the Journal, which on great occasions, 
such as that of the discussion on the Purchase of 
Piailways by the State, requires the addition of an 
extra number. 

In addition to this famous argument, which occupied 
three entire evenings, many interesting subjects have 
been discussed during the past two years, among 
which may be mentioned the price of coal, the recent 
progress of national debts, the statistics of legal 
procedure in England, the Bengal census, the income 
and property tax, the statistics of suicide among 
British troops, the elections of 1868 and 1874, local 
government, and co-operative land societies. At the 
discussion on the Purchase of Eailways by the State, 
it was my good fortune to be present. For three 
successive Tuesdays the old room in St. James's 
Square was crowded to excess. Crammed together in 



298 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

a stifling atmosphere — suggesting that philosophers, 
however much they may care for sanitary laws when 
a]3plied to the masses, are indifferent to them so far 
as they personally are concerned — the statists fought 
the great battle between Imperialism and private 
enterprise. An admirable paper by Mr. Biddulph 
Martin, advocating the propriety of the State purchase 
of Eailways, was the apple of discord thrown among 
the great authorities present. The Imperial theory 
was supported by Captain Tyler, and ably contested 
by Mr. William Newmarch, who vigorously opposed the 
scheme on purely financial grounds, and declared that 
the value, or rather the prospective value, of English 
Eailways had been grossly underrated at six hundred 
millions, and that a thousand millions would more 
accurately represent the sum the country would be 
called upon to pay for the privilege of becoming its 
own carrier. On this memorable evening the dis- 
cordant estimates of rival statists filled the souls of 
visitors with amazement. Millions — ay, hundreds of 
millions — flew about the room like the " chunks of old 
red sandstone " at the famous meeting of the Geological 
Society on the banks of " the Stanislow." At the last 
meeting on this great subject Mr. AUport, the veteran 
manager of the Midland Eailway, distinguished him- 
self by a horse, foot, and artillery attack upon the 
theorists who propounded uniform fares, and was 



THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 299' 

combated with equal ability by Mr. Hammond Chubb, 
who, in a vigorous speech, revived the falling fortunes 
of the Imperial Eule of the Eoad. In the hands of 
these learned gentlemen enormous sums were manipu- 
lated with such extraordinary facility that I became 
abashed at my own insignificance, and on reaching 
the cool air of St. James's Square found myself unable 
to bring my mind down from the contemplation of 
millions to the consideration of a humble cab-fare. I 
verily believe that cabby got much the better of me on 
that memorable evening from my inabihty to reduce 
my calculating power to the level of sixpences. 

But the lively and pleasant, if stuffy, evenings in 
the old room are over now, for the Society is weU. 
bestowed in its new dwelling by the banks of the 
Thames almost within speaking distance of the 
Eegistrar-General, and within a stone's-throw of the 
old haunts of the Eoyal Academy, and of the Eoyal 
and other Scientific Societies which now find shelter 
in Burlington House. The rapidly-increasing number 
of Fellows has long demanded increased accommoda- 
tion, and the Society has at last acquired ample scope 
for its lively debates — in connection with which I will 
add only one aspiration, — that when the members 
again discuss a subject with the animation, vigour, 
and skill expended on the Eailways, may I be there to- 
see, to hear, and to learn. 



300 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 



XIV. 

THE EOYAL GEOGKAPHICAL 
SOCIETY. 

The study of geography has been pursued at various 
epochs from very different motives. Love of adventure 
— in other words, the hope of getting something or of 
escaping from a condition too grievous to be endured — 
was doubtless the parent of geographical science, the 
observations and itineraries of those who travelled for 
piratical or other purposes being gradually systema- 
tized by map-makers and cosmogonists. From the 
earliest periods theories of the universe existed, most 
of which were abolished as bit by bit the true figure 
of the globe was revealed. Perhaps this perpetual 
destruction of old and construction of new systems 
formed one of the chief fascinations of geography 
in the many centuries during which mankind was 
occupied in chasing the Unknown from the face of 
the earth. At the i3resent moment little remains to 



THE KOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 301 

be discovered and described — as, excepting the polar 
regions, Central Asia, Inner Brazil, Central Africa, 
Australia, and the islands of Borneo and Madagascar, 
the world is depicted and understood with a very fair 
approach to accuracy. 

It was not always so — and there are few more 
instructive and humiliating occupations than that of 
comparing the cosmogonies and geographical systems 
of various periods. In one particular the most 
ancient world- systems agree. The world was a flat 
disc or a parallelogram, suiTOunded on all sides by the 
ocean, from beyond which sprang the vast blue dome 
of the heavens. To the Chaldean shepherd, living and 
dying within fifty or a hundred miles of one central 
spot, or to the early Greek voyager, who thought a 
trip to the Black Sea a desperate undertaking, there 
was little either in the earth beneath his feet or in the 
azure vault overhead to indicate that the world was of 
globular form. To him, then, the earth was shield- 
like, with the ocean stream representing a rim — the 
whole being surmounted by a canopy ; or, in other 
words, the world was a circle of earth, more or less 
raised in the centre, and covered by a crystal tent, 
around which flowed a moat. In the centre of this 
world was either the abode of the primaeval geographer 
or the chief seat of divine worship. Thus Olympus, 
and at a later date Delphi, were the Greek centres of 



302 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the world, and geographers of the Middle Ages invari- 
ably place Jerusalem in the centre of their curious 
maps. Homer, like many of his successors, never 
dreamt of a spherical world, but imagined it to be a 
flat circular body, round which flowed the ocean 
stream ; while over it, resting on Caucasus and Atlas, 
stretched the heavenly dome. This conception becomes 
more intelligible when we recollect that the world of 
Homer did not extend beyond the Mediterranean, the 
Caspian Sea, the Eed Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Out 
of ocean, or perhaps rather on the other side of its 
stream, the sun rose in the morning and sank at 
eve, and the two points where it appeared to touch 
the water formed the cardinal points in Homeric 
geography ; the world being thus divided into halves, 
one towards the rising and the other towards the 
setting sun. Far to the west — beyond the setting sun 
and across the ocean stream — were the shadowy 
realms of Hades, while under the earth were the 
regions of Tartarus, the abode of punished gods. A 
glance at a map will show that Hellas is the centre of 
the countries enumerated by Homer. 

At a later date — the comforting conclusion that the 
temple at Olympus was the centre of the world, and, 
therefore, of the universe, received many shocks. The 
well-known attempt of the Phoenicians to circum- 
navigate Libya, the voyage of Hanno, and the expedi- 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 303 

tion of Scylax, had opened the minds of men to the 
possibiHty of the world being something more than a 
mere fringe around the Mediterranean, and the ex- 
tensive commerce of the Ionian cities had served to 
explode mythical accounts of the earth's form and 
extent, and to prepare the way for more rational, though 
hardly more correct, theories. To Thales of MiLetus 
is ascribed the introduction of scientific geography. 
He is said by some to have asserted the sphericity of 
the earth, but others describe this theory of sphericity 
as applied to the universe rather than to the world. 
Thus, according to Thales, the heaven was a hollow 
ball, in the midst of which the earth, in form like a 
tambourine, floated, as a cork floats in water, or 
rather, as the yolk of an egg is contained within the 
white and the shell. Anaximander was also of opinion 
that the earth was cylindrical in form, and neither he 
nor any philosopher of the Ionian school appears to 
have had any inkling of the spherical form of the 
earth. The origin of the spherical doctrine can be 
clearly traced to the Pythagoreans, who derived the 
idea from astronomical observations, and their views 
obtained general acceptance by the time of Plato. To 
Pythagoras himself has been frequently ascribed the 
idea of a pyrocentric Kosmos — with worlds revolving 
round a central sun — according to the Copernican, 
or, to speak more accurately, the Newtonian scheme. 



304 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Be this as it may, the belief that the world is only one 
of many planets made no progress in the ancient 
world. It was far more consonant with the dignity 
of man to place his abode in the centre of the universe, 
and to make all things subsidiary to his honour and 
comfort. 

Herodotus inclined towards none of these views, 
and seems to have preferred the Xenophantic theory 
that the world is at the bottom of the universe, firmly 
rooted in infinite space. The extent of country visited 
and described by the most important of ancient 
travellers induced him to ridicule the idea that the 
world was circular. According to him it would be 
rather of an oval shape, having its extension east and 
west, surrounded, in all probability, by water like a 
huge island. In justice to Herodotus it may be ob- 
served that this plan of the world exactly coincided 
with his experience, the known world being longer 
from east to west than from north to south. This 
oval or oblong theory received a great accession of 
strength from the conquests of Alexander in the east, 
and the expedition of Pytheus of Massilia to the north- 
west coasts of Europe. This famous voyager followed 
the coasts of Spain and Gaul, passed up the British 
Channel, and thence along the east coast of England 
and across the Northern Ocean to Thule. 

While the dimensions of the known world were thus 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 305 

rapidly expanding, philosophy was paving the way for 
a more correct and scientific system of geography. 
P}i;hagoras, or his followers, and at a later date Plato 
and Aristotle, perceived the spherical form of the 
earth, and subsequent observations confirmed the 
truth of this important discovery ; but, oddly enough, 
the Epicureans still adhered to the primitive notion of 
a shield. Towards the end of the third century e.g., 
Eratosthenes of Cyrene raised geography to the 
dignity of a science. He constructed maps on mathe- 
matical principles, and invented parallels of latitude 
and longitude. He taught that the earth was spherical 
in form, surrounded by a firmament of similar shape, 
both of which revolved about one and the same 
axis. He also performed the feat of measuring the 
circumference of the earth by an ingenious method. 
He ascertained by astronomical observation that the 
arc between Alexandria and Syene was l-50th part 
of the earth's circumference ; he then measured the 
distance between these two places, and found it to be 
5000 stades, whence the total circumference would 
be 250,000 stades, or 28,800 miles. His method was 
correct, but some inaccuracy in his observations 
involved an error of nearly 4,000 miles. Dividing the 
earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres 
by the imaginary line called the Equator, he pro- 
ceeded to draw eight parallels of latitude at unequal 



306 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

intervals. These parallels were crossed at right 
angles by seven meridians. Considering that only a 
portion of the northern hemisphere was inhabited, 
equal in extent to one-eighth of the globe's surface, he 
compared the plan of the habitable world to a Mace- 
donian chlamys. From the days of Eratosthenes to 
those of Strabo and Pliny, no very great advance was 
made in geographical science. By the Komans the 
philosophical was neglected for the practical element, 
both Pomponius Mela and Pliny giving a very good 
account of the countries with which they were ac- 
quainted, and only falling back on "fancy geography," 
sphynxes and griffins, when touching the borderland 
of the Unknown. 

Ancient geography was destined to attain its 
highest perfection under Claudius Ptolemy, an Alex- 
andrian philosopher of the second century after 
Christ, and to his influence the blundering geography 
of the Middle Ages is often unjustly assigned. Ptolemy 
does not claim the merit of originating a system of 
geography, but amply acknowledges his obligation to 
Marinus of Tyre, whose writings are embodied in the 
work of the Alexandrian. The latitude and longitude 
of famous places was arrived at with greater certainty, 
and Ptolemy further improved his maps by drawing 
his parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude at 
equal intervals — a great advance on the system of 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 307 

Eratosthenes. Further improvements were also made 
by drawing the meridians, not in parallel hut con- 
verging lines, and in adding parallels of latitude south 
of the equator. So far, then, had the science of 
geography advanced, under Ptolemy — a spherical 
world formed the centre of the universe, and around 
it revolved, in their crystal spheres, the sun, moon, 
and ignes minores. The globe had been divided in 
two by the equator, and equal parallels of latitude and 
meridians of longitude had been laid down. The 
outlines of Europe had been ascertained with tolerable 
accuracy, and the greater part of Asia and Africa 
roughly sketched out. 

So far geography had steadily, if slowly, advanced, 
but a period had now arrived when that and every 
other science — together with art and literature — were 
doomed to be arrested by an extraordinary determi- 
nation of the human mind towards theology, to the 
exclusion of all positive studies. For nearly eight 
hundred years the human intellect was plunged in 
utter night. What little mental activity existed was 
exerted in one particular direction, and the adventures 
of an illiterate friar or the insane ravings of an 
unwashed recluse were considered more worthy of 
record and criticism than the observations of travellers 
or the deductions of mathematicians. The discourses 
of Eoman orators and Grecian sages were ignomini- 



308 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

ously expunged from the parchment required for 
miraculous hiographies and apocryphal histories.. 
That this pecuHar phase of superstition should have 
seized upon barbarians was perhaps not to he 
wondered at, but the enslavement of the Greek mind 
will ever present a melancholy problem to the student 
of psychology. 

The effect on geography of this eclipse of the 
human understanding was immediate and complete. 
Within three hundred years of the death of Ptolemy 
his system had fallen into general discredit, and the 
spherical theory of the earth was sneered at as ridicu- 
lous and condemned as blasphemous. Curious maps- 
appeared, in which all the errors of the most ancient 
systems were reproduced, and the world was held to 
be a mountain surrounded by water, situated at the 
bottom of the universe, and shut in by crystal walls, 
and a crystal vault, or double heaven. With logic 
unanswerable in the sixth century it was urged that 
if the world were not the base and centre of the uni- 
verse it would fall down, and the idea of a globe 
inhabited by antipodes was demonstrated to be as 
absurd as it was impious. From the maps of this 
and several succeeding centuries all traces of equator, 
parallels, and meridians disappeared. The world was 
an oblong hill, round which flowed the ocean, and the 
ancient fallacy that the Caspian Sea was an inlet of 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 309 

the ocean was revived. Men went back to original 
conceptions, and despising the experience and thought 
of ages as mere heathen learning, disdained to en- 
cumber themselves with facts. 

The site of the terrestrial paradise was an enormous 
difficulty, and the course of the four rivers which 
flowed from it also exercised the ingenuity of medigsval 
geographers. It is impossible to refrain from sym- 
pathizing with these martyrs to science and supersti- 
tion. They were bound, on pam of fire and faggot, 
to find a place on their maps for the terrestrial 
paradise, and in their despau' "dashed it in" some- 
where. Paradise was sometimes beyond the ocean 
altogether, but this theory involved the expedient of 
conducting the four rivers under the ocean stream, 
and was abandoned in favour of a more eligible site 
in the highest part of the world. Sometimes this is 
in Central Asia, sometimes in Armenia, and occasion- 
ally in the fabled Mountains of the Moon, but is 
always described as an inaccessible spot. For some 
unexplained reason the oblong maps went out of 
fashion about the eleventh century, and were sup- 
planted by the old shield-like circle surrounded by 
water, but now having Jerusalem instead of Delphi 
for the central point. Between this period and the 
end of the fourteenth century a great advance was 
made. The mariner's compass was invented, the 



310 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

astrolabe came into general use, the spherical form of 
the earth was insisted on by Mandeville, and the map 
of Marino Sanuto and the famous Carte Catalane 
were produced. 

While the East was becoming daily better known 
by the travels of Marco Polo, Eubruquis, and 
Mandeville, the Portuguese and Spaniards were fight- 
ing the Moors in the West, but it was not till 1418 
that the capture and colonization of the Canaries 
prepared the way for the circumnavigation of Africa. 
Dim traditions of ancient voyages around Libya had 
reached Prince Henry of Portugal, and a great impulse 
was given to African exploration. Bit by bit the west 
coast was explored, until, standing southward, and 
being driven eastward by heavy gales, Bartholomew 
Diaz rounded the Cajpe of Good Hope and came to in 
Delagoa Bay, an exploit followed by the successful 
voyage of Vasco de Gama round the Cape to India. 
Pending this expedition Christopher Columbus made 
the most important geographical discovery of ancient 
or modern times. Columbus was not only a practical 
sailor, but a skilled theoretical geographer, and found 
much employment at Lisbon in making maps and 
globes for the Portuguese expeditions. Believing in 
the reported great extension of Asia to the eastward, 
and believing also the world to be much smaller than 
it really is, the great Genoese thought that he had 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 311 

only to sail across an island- studded ocean to reach 
the empires of Chipangu and Cathay. In most of the 
maps of the period immediately preceding that of 
Columbus, islands are laid down, but no idea of another 
continent had occurred to any one. Nothing can be 
more ridiculous than the attempt to ascribe the dis- 
coveries of Columbus to *' information received " from 
the Northmen during a supposed voyage to Iceland. 
On the contrary, he firmly believed that the first conti- 
nent he came to would be Eastern Asia, or rather 
Japan. The state of knowledge at his time fully 
warranted this belief. Ptolemy, whose works appear to 
have been preserved from utter loss by the Arabs, had 
extended Asia far to the eastward of its proper position, 
and the discovery of countries beyond the India known 
to him had brought the eastern coasts of Asia, as 
described by Marco Polo, still further eastward of their 
real longitude ; and as Chipangu was represented to 
be 1500 miles distant from the mainland, it is not to 
be wondered at that on a globe of the fifteenth centmy 
the east coast of Japan is j^la-ced within seventy 
degrees of the Azores, and " India beyond the Ganges " 
within ninety, instead of at more than double those 
distances. The persistence with which Columbus 
clung to the idea that he had all along been navi- 
gating in an ocean fuU of islands is proved by the 
declaration made by him just before his fourth voyage 



312 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

— that the passage westward to the Indies lay between 
the lands discovered by him in his second and third 
voyages. 

The history of American discovery induces the 
feeling often arrived at by those who study the history 
of great inventions and discoveries — that if Columbus 
had not discovered the Western world just when he 
did, somebody else would have been before him, as 
Vespucci trod upon his heels. The reassertion of the 
spherical form of the earth was the real cause of the 
great outbreak of marine exploration. The revival of 
this important truth set mariners to planning the 
circumnavigation of the earth in good earnest. Thus 
Columbus and Cabot both pursued independent in- 
vestigations, and arrived at the same conclusion 
respecting the propinquity of India, but in the mag- 
nitude of their [new discoveries ultimately lost sight 
of their original design. These two great Italian 
navigators drew their inspiration from pure science, 
acted on their knowledge of the sphere, and calculated 
the effect of great circle sailing. 

After this date the most distant seas were furrowed 
by European keels. Spain, Portugal, France, and 
England vied with each other in pushing into strange 
countries, and while the literature of travel received 
many rich additions, the Eastern and Western worlds 
were rapidly mapped out. England was conspicuous 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 313 

by her endeavours to discover a north-west or north- 
east passage to India, and has during the last 300 
years expended much money and many lives in a 
pursuit which has hitherto proved barren. Mean- 
while the less scientific than practical men of Devon 
sailed forth in tall ships, and enlivened the pursuit of 
geographical knowledge by leading the Spaniards a 
terrible life. Hawkins, Drake, Oxenham, and Frobisher 
had a keen eye for a Spanish galleon, and enriched 
the records of maritime discovery and themselves at 
the same time. From that to the present time the 
progress made has no longer been so brilliant, for the 
simple reason that there was so much less to discover, 
although the voyages of Cook, Tasman, and La 
Perouse disclosed islands and continents where their 
existence had been previously undreamt of. 

For about a century and three-quarters after its 
incorporation the Eoyal Society was, with the excep- 
tion of its early offshoot, the Eoyal Astronomical 
Society, the only body which gave a scientific impulse 
to geographical investigation. At rare intervals, and 
in a grudging, half-hearted, reluctant way, the State 
— I cannot say, " came forward," but allowed to be 
extracted from its coffers a small sum of money — 
generally ridiculously inadequate to the purpose for 
which it was intended. When a grant was made the 
usual practice was to confide its administration to a 



314 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

special committee of the Eoyal Society, who thus to a 
considerable extent regulated the distribution of such 
crumbs as were occasionally thrown to science. Even 
at such a recent date as 1830 the claims of science 
and scientific men received scant recognition in this 
country, and while the savans of France and Germany 
were decorated with endless stars, crosses, and 
ribands, and sate familiarly at the table of kings, our 
own philosophers were contemptuously neglected by a 
nation caring for nothing but politics, religion, and 
commerce. Thanks, however, to the exertions of 
Brewster and Babbage, and in a considerable degree 
to the spirited advocacy of Brougham, the British 
mind became aware that an attitude of indifference 
towards science was indicative of a barbarous nation. 
An immediate and permanent reaction took place, 
and the fashionable taste for science — first developed 
by Davy — soon assumed serious proportions, while 
the exertions of Birkbeck contributed to spread a taste 
for physical science among the great body of the 
people. At this period of transition in popular feeling 
three bodies sprang into existence, all of which have 
since exercised an important influence upon scientific 
research. These were the British Association for the 
Advancement of Science, the Statistical Society, its 
immediate outgrowth, and the Eoyal Geographical 
Society. 



THE EOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 31^- 

The latter important organization, in common with 
the Geograi)hical and Kosmos Clubs, is the offspring 
of the Ealeigh Travellers Club, the idea of which was 
first suggested by Captain Arthur de Capell Brooke to 
Captain Mangles, E.N., Lieutenant Holman, the 
famous blind traveller, Colonel Leake, and Mr. Leigh 
in the autumn of 1826. Great quaintness character- 
ized the original plan. The club was to consist of 
eighty-five members, and the globe was to be mapped 
out into divisions corresponding to the number of 
members, so that each division should be represented 
by a member, and the club collectively have visited every 
known part of the globe. Captain Brooke addressed a 
cu'cular letter to the most distinguished travellers of 
the day, and the originators of the movement, joined 
by Mr. John Kennie, Mr. C. E. Cockerill, and Captain 
Corry, E.N., held their first dinner at Grillon's Hotel.. 
At the second meeting the name of " The Ealeigh " 
was adopted by the club, and thenceforward its regular 
meetings were held at the Thatched House until its 
dissolution in 1854. New members came in rapidly. 
Eastern travellers were represented by Mr. Colebrooke,, 
Mr. Marsden, and Mr. Baillie Fraser ; African, South 
American, and European wanderers by Captain Coch- 
rane, E.N. (afterwards Earl Dundonald), Mr. John 
Cam Hobhouse, and Mr. J. Eennie ; surveyors, by 
Captain Owens, E.N. ; and the bold explorers of the 



316 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Arctic Eegions, by Sabine and Brooke, Parry and 
Franklin. Sir John Barrow also joined the club 
shortly after its inauguration, and presided at the 
second and third dinners. The second meeting, in 
1827, was presided over by Mr. Marsden, author of 
that excellent edition of Marco Polo which rehabilitated 
the great traveller's reputation, and preceded the 
thoughtful edition of M. Pauthier and the elaborate 
and exhaustive work of Colonel Yule. On this occa- 
sion, Captain Brooke proposed that a permanent 
union should be established between geography and 
gastronomy, and that to this end members should be 
invited to present any scarce foreign game, fruits, 
fish, wines, etc., as a means of adding to the interest 
of the dinners, " not merely from the objects of luxury 
thus afforded, but for the observations they will be 
the means of giving rise to." This was successfully 
carried into effect — the members on various occasions 
•discussing haunches of reindeer venison from Spitz - 
bergen, Swedish brandy, rye-cake baked at the North 
Cape, Norway cheese, cloudberries from Lapland, 
Heshbon bread from the Dead Sea, capercailzie from 
Sweden, and hams from Mexico. 

After extending hospitality for many years to all 
distinguished travellers, "dining and wining" Boss, 
from the North ; Chesney, from the Euphrates ; 
D'Abbadie, from Abyssinia ; Vigne, from Cashmere ; 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 317 

Schomburgk, from Guiana ; Wellsted, from Arabia ; 
and Captain Shakespeare, from Asia ; the Ealeigh 
Club was dissolved in 1854, in order that a new club 
might be formed in closer connection with the Eoyal 
Geographical Society. 

This child of the old Ealeigh Dining Club was born 
on the 24th of May, 1830, when a numerous meeting 
took place at the Thatched House. The gathering 
was not confined to the members of the club, but 
was attended by many other gentlemen of a scientific 
turn, and the chair was taken by Mr. (afterwards 
Sir John) Barrow. It was then stated that among 
numerous literary and scientific societies established 
in the metropolis, one at least was wanting ta 
complete the circle of scientific institutions, whose 
sole object should be the promotion and diffusion 
of that important and entertaining branch of know- 
ledge — geography. The interest excited by this, 
department of science was universally felt, and its 
advantages to mankind in general, and to a maritime 
nation like Great Britain, were at once acknowledged. 
To promote geographical investigation a Society was 
formed with the several objects of collecting, register- 
ing, digesting, and printing, for the use of the 
members and the public, in a cheap form and at 
certain intervals, any new and interesting facts which 
might come into the possession of the Society. The 



■318 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Koyal Geographical Society proposed also to accumu- 
late a library of the best books on geography, and a 
complete collection of maps and charts from the 
earliest period of rude geographical delineation to the 
present time. It was also proposed to open communi- 
cation with all literary and scientific societies whose 
objects include or sympathize with geography, and it 
was "hoped" that the Society would ultimately be 
enabled from its funds to render pecuniary assistance 
to such travellers as might require it, in order to 
facilitate the attainment of some particular object of 
research. At a meeting of the young Society, held at 
the rooms of the Horticultural Society in the following 
July, it was announced that in the short intervening 
time 400 members had been enrolled, and an enlarged 
programme was presented embracing almost every 
variety of geographical knowledge. It was urged, 
and with much good sense, that the age of great 
discoveries was nearly — if not quite — past, and that 
minute exactitude must for the future take the j)lace 
of brilliant conception and daring adventure. Sir 
John Barrow quoted, and enlarged u^Don the quotation, 
"that the man who points out, in the midst of the 
wide ocean, a single rock unknown before is a bene- 
factor of the human race." 

The progress of the Society was rapid. In 1832, 
King William had been secured as Patron; the late 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 319 

Duke of Sussex as Vice-Patron; and Lord Goderich 
as President. Five hundred and thirty-five members 
were enrolled, and beyond this number was an illus- 
trious roll of foreign honorary members, among whom 
shines conspicuously the name of Alexander Von 
Humboldt. Encom'aged by the receipt of £4495 in 
the first year, and a probable income of ^91200 a year 
at least, the Council proceeded at once to publish a 
Journal — to be presented gratuitously to members — in 
addition to the " Proceedings," which are sent to every 
member within the United Kingdom. The Eoyal 
Patron had, moreover, encouraged the Society by a 
donation of fifty guineas, and some 400 volumes — the 
nucleus of the present splendid library — were presented 
to the Society by a few members. The Eoyal Geo- 
graphical Society now began to assist discoverers with 
grants, and to reward them with premiums. The first 
j)remium was awarded to the unfortunate Kichard 
Lander — one of those adventurous travellers who have 
fallen sacrifices to the object of penetrating Central 
Africa — and a subsidy was granted to the Arctic 
Expedition, conducted by Captain Back, in search of 
Captain Eoss. Schomburgk's Guiana Expedition also 
received great assistance from the Society. 

In 1834 the Eoyal premium was awarded to 
Lieutenant Alexander Burnes, afterwards murdered, 
with Sir William MacNaghten, by Akhbar Khan at 



320 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Kabul — *'for having navigated the Indus, and com- 
municated much new and important information 
regarding that river ; for important observations made 
in a route hitherto unknown to Europeans, from Kabul, 
across the Indian Caucasus, to the ancient cities of 
Balkh and Bokhara ; for new and interesting inform- 
ation regarding the upper course of the Oxus," etc, 
etc. During the next year the Council, encouraged by 
the flourishing state of the finances, launched out 
boldly, and voted .£500 towards the outfit and main- 
tenance of the two expeditions already subsidized — the 
Land Arctic Expedition and the Quorra Expedition — 
and, moreover, laid siege to the late Lord Monteagle, 
then Secretary of State for the Colonies, with such 
excellent effect as to extract dGlOOO from the national 
purse. In 1836, the progress of an African Explor- 
ing Expedition from Delagoa Bay having been put a 
stop to by the outbreak of a Kaffir war, the Society 
devoted £900 to the Guiana Expedition. Grey's 
Australian Expedition was also patronised by the 
Society, and in 1838 an historical name turns up in 
its annals. Five hundred pounds were voted, in 
conjunction with the Society for the Promotion of 
Christian Knowledge, for an expedition to Kurdistan 
to look up the Nestorian Christians, who for many 
centuries had found homes in nooks and corners of 
Central Asia. The mission was conducted by Mr. 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 321 

Ainsworth and by a Nestorian Christian — a certain 
Mr. Eassam — since the teterrima causa of the success- 
ful, but useless and costly, Abyssinian war. The 
attention of the Society now became again turned 
towards African exploration, and a small subsidy was 
voted to Dr. Beke to assist him in his investigations. 

Having, during the first few years of its existence, 
given fair promise of an eminently useful career, the 
Society — between the years 1840 and 1848 — lapsed 
into that inertness which occupies a certain part of 
the history of almost all societies. These institutions 
start vigorously, but after a while, from causes on 
which it is unnecessary to dilate, sink into dulness 
and insignificance, from which they require to be 
aroused by the touch of a master hand. The sudden 
improvement in the income of the Society — which 
rose from £696 10s. 5d. in 1848 to ^62584 7s. in 1855 
— was due mainly to the new life infused into the 
Society by Admiral Smyth, whose presidency was 
followed by the active reign of Sir Eoderick Murchison, 
while the efforts of these invaluable presidents were 
ably seconded by Dr. Norton Shaw, at that time 
secretary of the Society. From a miserably low ebb 
the finances, which had been heavily drawn upon by 
the questionable policy of starting original expeditions, 
were restored to a healthy condition. Owing to the 
energetic advocacy of Sir Eoderick Murchison, whose 



322 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

distinguished rank as a geologist lent additional 
weight to his recommendations, and whose tact in 
offering the inducement of a public map-room had no 
slight influence on the negotiation, her Majesty's 
ministers felt justified, in 1854, in offering "to submit 
annually to Parliament, in the Civil Service Esti- 
mates, a grant of d6500 to the Eoyal Geographical 
Society, to enable the Society to hire a house or rooms 
for its meetings, and for the deposit and exhibition 
of its maps, upon the distinct understanding that 
the Society will bind itself to provide a public hall 
or suitable rooms where every person from town or 
country may go free of charge to obtain the informa- 
tion he might require." Their lordships also required 
that in making the annual application for the grant, 
the Society should furnish a short report of its 
proceedings, detailing the additions made to its 
maps or geographical knowledge, and specifying the 
number of persons who have visited the collections 
of the Society for the purpose of study or inspection 
during the preceding year — the report to be printed 
with the estimate laid annually before the House of 
Commons. 

Under the presidency of Sir Eoderick Murchison 
the Society first acquired that importance which it 
has since maintained and increased. The career of 
this remarkable man commenced in the army, but at 



THE KOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 323 

the conclusion of the war in 1815 he — by the advice 
of Sir Humphry Davy — turned his attention to 
physical science. In 1825 he wrote his first geological 
paper, and from that time to his death was one of the 
most successful cultivators of geological science that 
this country has ever seen. His discovery of the 
" Silurian " system made his name famous, and his 
subsequent exposition of the Devonian, Permian, 
and Laurentian systems confirmed and increased 
his reputation. He was proud of his share in 
founding the Koyal Geographical Society in 1830, 
when, in conjunction with Mountstuart Elphinstone, 
the late Lord Broughton, and Eobert Brown, he 
assisted in drawing up, under the guidance of Sir 
John Barrow, the laws by which the Society has since 
been governed. During the latter part of his life his 
history is the veritable history of the Society. From 
the year 1843, when he first occupied the presidential 
chair, he occupied it at intervals, but for the last nine 
years of his life his tenure of office was continuous. 
As I have already shown, the Society was much 
indebted to this distinguished philosopher, who im- 
mortalized himself by predicting, in 1844, the golden 
future of Australia. Mmxhison, who had then 
just returned from examining the Ural Mountains, 
was greatly impressed by the resemblance between 
their geological formation and that of the great 



324 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

Australian chain, which had been reported on at 
about the same period by Count Strzelecki, and in 
his presidential address he expressed his surprise 
that the latter region had as yet offered no trace of 
auriferous veins — the fact being that gold had 
actually been discovered by the Count, but that the 
news had been suppressed by the advice of the 
governor, Sir George Gipps, who feared that ''If he 
made known his discovery, the maintenance of dis- 
cipline amongst the 45,000 convicts, which the 
Australian colonies then contained, might be almost 
impossible." Murchison, unaware of the true state of 
affairs, and pursuing independently his study of the 
geology of Australia, became at last convinced that 
gold must exist there, and expressed that conviction 
on three public occasions — in a memoir read before 
the British Association, in a lecture delivered at the 
British Institution, and finally, in an article in the 
Quarterly Review for 1850, entitled " Siberia and 
Cahfornia." The operations of Mr. Hargreaves pro- 
duced, in 1851, the realization of these profound 
views, and triumphantly vindicated their accuracy. 
After this date Murchison took a prominent part in 
stimulating Australian explorations, and at his sug- 
gestion several Australian travellers, among whom 
were Strzelecki, Sturt, Leichhardt, Macdonald Stuart, 
and O'Hara Burke, received honorary rewards from 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 325 

the Society, to which Murchison had the gratification 
of announcing, in his last address, that whereas, in 
1830, nothing was known of Australia beyond a small 
area around Sydney, two-thirds of the continent are 
now occupied. 

Far from restricting his sympathies to the antipodes, 
Murchison devoted great attention and strenuous 
advocacy to Arctic exploration and African discovery. 
His deepest sympathies were engaged in the famous, 
but ill-fated expedition under Sir John Franklin, and 
when the Erebus and Terror were lost sight of he 
made it the business of his life to ascertain their 
fate, until the voyage of the Fox, under Sir Leopold 
McClintock, in 1857, solved the painful mystery. 
With like vigour Murchison addressed himself to the 
great field of African discovery. Having at a very 
early period satisfied himself that the interior of 
the continent — instead of being a mere sandy desert, 
as depicted on the maps of the time — was an 
elevated plateau — giving rise to great rivers like the 
Zambesi, the Congo, and the Nile, which flowed 
to east, west, and north almost from a common 
centre — he encouraged and assisted to the utmost of 
his power that great band of African travellers who 
have succeeded in tearing away a great part of the 
veil which long shrouded the interior of the continent. 
The soundness of his conclusions was in this, as in 



326 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

the case of Australian gold, completely demonstrated, 
and entitles him to a place among those philosophers 
of the first rank, who, in addition to marvellous 
patience and accuracy in the collection and arrange- 
ment of materials, are endowed with that sublime spark 
of creative imagination which kindles dry isolated 
facts into the living fire of a great truth. Not only 
in geology and geography did Murchison distinguish 
himself, hut rendered important service to the cause 
of general science by assisting to found the British 
Association, and in devoting much time and care to 
the proceedings of that learned body. He was also 
Director-General of the Museum of Practical Geology 
and Chief of the School of Mines, in which capacity 
he readily grasped the opportunity of introducing 
scientific training into the education of the working 
classes, and took an active part in the labours of the 
Commission on the coal resources of the country. In 
addition to the valuable assistance which he rendered 
the Eoyal Geographical Society in obtaining from 
the Government, in 1854, the grant of an annual 
subsidy, he gave active aid in obtaining, in 1859, the 
Eoyal Charter of Incorporation, and also originated 
the Bellot Testimonial Fund — an admirable instance 
of the readiness with which English geographers 
appreciate true merit, irrespective of national dis- 
tinctions. 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 327 

In the address delivered by Major-General Sir 
Henry C. Eawlinson, from the presidential chair of 
the Eoyal Geographical Society, on the 27th of May, 
1872, the brilliant career of Murchison was alluded to 
in the following terms : — 

"It has often been a reproach to the Government 
of this country that scientific services are, as a rule, 
so little regarded and so poorly rewarded ; but 
Murchison's career furnished a bright example to the 
contrary. He was knighted in 1846, was made a 
K.C.B. in 1863, and a baronet in 1866. From the 
other sovereigns of Europe he also received a shower 
of well-earned honours. By the Emperor of Bussia 
he was made a Knight of the 2nd Class of St. Anne, 
and subsequently a Grand Cross of the same order, 
and also of that of St. Stanislaus ; and as these 
honours were conferred for services rendered to the 
Eussian Government, he was graciously permitted to 
accept them, and to wear the crosses and insignia at the 
British Court. Orders w^ere also conferred upon him 
by the sovereigns of Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and 
Brazil. A list, indeed, has been lately published of. 
nineteen stars, crosses, and other emblems of dis- 
tinction which belonged to Sir Eoderick at the time of 
his decease, and which constitute, as has been said, 
' the largest number of honorary decorations which, 
in modern times, have been awarded by crowned 



B28 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

heads to any individual for purely scientific attain- 
ments.' 

*'By the public and scientific bodies of this country 
and of the continent he was further rewarded with a 
similar profusion of titles and honours. He was a 
D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Cambridge, and M.A. of 
Dublin. Of the Eoyal Society he was not only a 
Fellow, but also a Vice-President, and had further 
received from it the Copley Gold Medal. Amongst 
similar first-class scientific prizes, he had been 
awarded the Brisbane Gold Medal from Edinburgh, 
the Prix Cuvier from Paris, and the Wollaston Medal 
from the Geological Society of London. He was a 
member of the Academies of St. Petersburg, Berlin, 
Copenhagen, Brussels, Stockholm, and Turin, and a 
corresponding member of the Institute of France. At 
home, at the time of his death, he was Vice-President 
of the Geographical and Geological Societies, a trustee 
of the British Museum, of the Hunterian Museum, and 
of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, an honorary member of the Eoyal Society of 
Edinburgh and of the Eoyal Irish Academy, President 
of the Hakluyt Society, Fellow of the Linnean Society, 
and of many other scientific bodies." 

Far less fortunate in obtaining recognition of his 
great services was Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki, 
whose life was from its outset entirely devoted to the 



THE EOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 829 

pursuit of pure science. After discovering and bringing 
to the notice of the Colonial department the rich 
deposits of native copper in the Upper Lake region of 
Canada, he — at the earnest solicitation of Sir George 
Gipps, the Governor-General of New South Wales — 
devoted five years of his life to a systematic survey of 
that portion of New South Wales which extends from 
the 30 deg. to the 39 deg. of south latitude. The 
labour of this survey was very great. 

He made — to use his own words — 7000 miles on 
foot, and incurred an outlay of £5000. He prepared 
a geological map of New South Wales and of Van 
Diemen's Land, on the scale of one inch to the mile, 
which he was unable to take upon himself to publish 
in this country, from a disappointment in the recovery 
of funds for that purpose consequent on the premature 
death of Sir George Gipps. In addition to the dis- 
covery of gold. Count Strzelecki penetrated through 
a series of rugged and sterile defiles into the beautiful 
tract of country named by him " Gipps' Land," and 
in the course of this exploration was compelled to cut 
his way for twenty- six days through a zone of almost 
impenetrable scrub. Although the expedition had 
been undertaken at the express request of the Governor, 
under the condition that the " Colonial treasury should 
be associated with the enterprise, and defray half the 
expenses," and that, in the event of his researches 



830 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

tending to results likely to benefit the public, Sir 
George Gipps would ''recommend her Majesty's 
Government to repay him all the outlay which he 
might be obliged to incur in his expedition," the 
count never received a shilling beyond some £400 
subscribed by the Tasmanian public. Undismayed, 
however, by the scant recognition of his services by 
.the Colonial and the Imperial Government, which 
confined its notice of him to the offer of an official 
position in the Colonies, he produced his work on the 
*' Physical Geography of New South Wales and Van 
Biemen's Land." This work appeared in 1845, and 
at once placed the name of Count Strzelecki on the 
roll of distinguished geographers. Science, however, 
has to regret that he was soon called away from his 
labours as an author to undertake the relief of suffer- 
ing humanity, as he accepted the self-imposed and 
self-remunerated mission of distributing, during a 
period of four years, from 1846 to 1850, amongst the 
famine-stricken peasantry of Ireland, the relief which 
the liberality of the British public had collected for 
them. During this period he left the question of the 
discovery of gold and his other claims to the course of 
events. Meanwhile, however, the discovery of the 
precious metal in New South Wales had oozed out, 
and later explorers- not merely enriched themselves 
suddenly, but claimed the reward offered by the 



THE EOYAL GEOGEAPHICAL SOCIETY. 331 

Legislative Council of Sydney to the discoverer of 
gold. That reward, however, was not distributed 
until 1853, when the Legislative Council supported 
the proposal of the Executive Government of the 
colony that the sum of £5000 should be given to those 
who first published the discovery and taught the 
miners how to wash the gold, and not to him who 
first made the discovery and kept it secret at the 
express request of the Executive Government. Justice, 
however, was done to Count Strzelecki's scientific 
researches in the course of the debates of the Legis- 
lative Council in its sitting on 5th October, 1853, and 
his claim to the discovery of the gold-fields in 1839 
was established beyond all dispute. 

It is somewhat to be wondered at that, after the 
treatment he had received, he applied for, and 
obtained, in 1845, letters of naturalization as a British 
subject, for he must have been convinced that in this 
country, and at that period, science, like virtue, was 
its own reward. But his faith in England was destined 
to receive a certain justification, for tardy justice — so 
far as honour and glory were concerned — was meted 
out to him when, at the recommendation of Mr. 
Gladstone, he was made a Knight Commander of the 
order of St. Michael. From the time when Sir 
Koderick Murchison devoted his great powers to its 
consolidation and advancement, the Eoyal Geographi- 



332 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

cal Society, gradually abandoning the policy of initi- 
ating expeditions, contented itself with making grants 
in aid of such enterprises, or in bestowing rewards 
upon brilliant and successful trayellers. Large sums 
have been spent upon the library and the map-room ; 
indeed, to the latter is now faithfully devoted the 
whole sum contributed to the Society by Government. 
It is perhaps not so well known as it deserves to be, 
that the map-room is now, and has since the annual 
^500 was first given, been thrown open to the public, 
who are free to inspect and in many cases to take 
tracings of the maps in possession of the Society. 
The country may therefore be congratulated on having 
laid out its five hundred a year to advantage, and on 
having for once gotten the best of a bargain. The 
map-room in the house at present occupied by the 
Society is 60 feet long by 40 feet broad, and is 
furnished with more than 60,000 maps. Perhaps it 
is as well that ordinary emigrants, travellers, and the 
general public are not aware of the privilege they 
may exercise on any day during office hours at the 
corner of Savile Eow and Burlington Gardens ; but 
the military and civil servants of Her Majesty well 
appreciate the value of the Society's map-room. No 
sooner does a squabble occur — in Ashanti, Abyssinia, 
or Atchin — than Government departments make a 
rush to Savile Eow, and lay hands on all matter 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 333 

relating to that portion of the world which happens to 
be interesting for the moment. 

With equally enlightened public spirit, the Eoyal 
Geograi)hical Society offered, six years ago, gold and 
bronze medals to be competed for by public school- 
boys, and the experiment has since been continued 
with very great success. A gold and a bronze medal 
are given to the first and second competitors in 
physical geography, and like prizes to those successful 
in political geography. These have been carried off 
by Eton College, Liverpool College, University College 
School, Clifton College, and the City of London School 
— among which the success of Liverj)ool College has 
been conspicuous. At the last examination, however, 
Liverpool did not carry off any of the prizes, while 
the City of London School took the gold medal for 
physical and the bronze medal for political geography. 

Although possessing a handsome house of their 
own, worth some £20,000, the Fellows of the Society 
find it impossible to hold their general meetings, which 
take place on the two first Mondays in every month 
from November to June, within the limits of their 
own building. This is in part to be explained by the 
immense size to which the Society has grown, and 
in a considerable degree to the Eoyal Geographical 
Society being the ''fashion." When a really genuine 
big lion returns from foreign wilds and is docile 



334 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

enough to " roar as gently as a sucking dove " at the 
bidding of the Council, a determined rush is made for 
admission, the lives of the Fellows are made weary 
unto them by the ladies of their acquaintance, and an 
immense audience thunders at the gate. Under these 
circumstances, the Chancellor and Senate of the 
University of London have — in a spirit of hearty 
liberality — permitted the Society to hold its meetings 
in their magnificent theatre at Burlington House. 
This permission was not granted by the University as 
a matter of course. On the contrary, the Senate were 
so outrageously worried by applications from various 
quarters to hold meetings in their hall, that they 
passed a resolution restricting its use to meetings 
connected with educational purposes, and it was con- 
sidered a high compliment to the public importance 
and utility of the Eoyal Geographical Society, when 
that body was made an exception to the rule and 
permitted to make use of Burlington House for its 
meetings. 

In addition to the privilege of attending meetings, 
listening to the great lions, and bearding the lesser 
lions during the discussion which follows the reading 
of papers, the Fellows have the use of a valuable 
library, containing 20,000 volumes on geography and 
cognate sciences, and a fine collection of English and 
foreign scientific periodicals. It would appear that 



THE EOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 335 

the numerous Fellows avail themselves pretty 
thoroughly of their rights, for in the ten years ending 
in 1872 the rooms of the Koyal Geographical Society 
were visited by 45,334 persons, and the evening 
meetings were attended by 55,300, making a total of 
100,634 persons who have derived instruction or 
amusement from maps, books, and papers. No 
scientific society is in a more thoroughly healthy 
condition from a financial point of view, and none is 
acquiring new members more rai)idly. In the report 
of the Council, read at the last anniversary meeting, 
it was announced that no fewer than 342 new 
members, besides nine honorary corresponding As- 
sociates, had been elected during, the year. The 
total number now on the rolls is 2809 ordinary and 
seventy-six honorary corresponding members. The 
annual income of the Society is nearly £9000, and its 
capital, obtained from bequests and accumulations 
of subscriptions, amounts to about £25,000, partly 
invested in the freehold property in Savile Eow and 
partly in public securities. During the last few years 
the library and the map-room have received many 
important additions. Valuable presents in books, and 
money for the purchase of them, have been made to 
the library; and, under the discriminating guidance 
of Mr. Keith Johnston, application was made to the 
Governments of Europe for the most important 



336 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

geographical documents which they have severally 
published. This appeal has been nobly responded to, 
more than 3500 sheets having been, during the past 
year, added to the collection of the Society, many of 
these being equally valuable as specimens of the most 
elaborate cartography and as indications of the latest 
geographical data. The Journal of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society has expanded into a bulky volume of 
valuable matter, admirably edited by the learned and 
indefatigable secretary, Mr. H. W. Bates, the value of 
whose labours has been handsomely acknowledged by 
Sir Henry C. Eawlinson, and by the Eight Honourable 
Sir H. Bartle Frere, K.C.B. Disdaining — possibly 
overmuch — matter of purely antiquarian interest, and 
devoting itself rather to the development of present 
science than to the description and elucidation of ex- 
ploded theories, the Royal Geographical Society has 
yet, among its wonderful collection of modern car- 
tography, relics of the past, which cannot fail to 
interest the student of that extraordinary period when 
Europe was struggling through the twilight which 
followed the deep night of the Middle Ages. One of 
those is a fac simile of the extraordinary Mappa Mundi 
made by Richard of Haldingham, some time between 
1275 and 1300, and preserved in Hereford Cathedral. 
This map is 52 inches in diameter, and is richly 
coloured. It is circular in form, the earth being 



THE KOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 337 

surrounded by the ocean ; the upper part of the map 
is the east, and in the centre is the city of Jerusalem. 
The Mediterranean Sea, with the Adriatic and Black 
Seas, occupies the lion's share of the map — which, it 
is needless to say, is entirely free from parallels or 
meridians. Far away to the north of the Black Sea 
is the Caspian — an inlet of the ocean — and the Ked 
Sea and Persian Gulf are also shown, coloured a 
bright scarlet. There is little doubt that this map 
expresses exactly the state of mediaeval geography at 
the close of the thirteenth century, for it could not be 
expected that the discoveries of Marco Polo would be 
immediately adopted by cartographers. The great 
rivers Nile and Danube are distinctly marked, with 
their many mouths opening to the sea, and the 
great cities are also put in with some approach to 
accuracy. Touching sacred or legendary sites no 
doubt is exhibited. The tower of Babel is boldly 
drawn, as are also the barns of Joseph, the labyrinth 
of Crete, the spot where the Israelites crossed the Pied 
Sea, and the course of their wanderings in search of 
the promised land. Europe presents a curious out- 
line. The Gulf of Lyons is completely filled up, 
and Spain more resembles a western prolongation of 
France than an independent peninsula ; but the great 
rivers and the towns upon them are done justice to — 
the Ehone flows past Lyons to Marseilles — the Seine 



338 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

past Paris to the English Channel — the Thames from 
Oxford by London to the North Sea — the Severn by 
Worcester — and the Dee by Chester. 

The British Islands present an odd outline, and 
suggest the idea they have undergone much squeezing 
to get them into the circle. On the opposite or 
eastern side, far beyond India, is a circular island 
containing four rivers. This is the terrestrial paradise 
with its central fountain whence flow the sweet waters 
of the earth. Adam and Eve are here represented, 
and a similar style of pictorial embellishment covers 
the whole of this marvellously interesting map. Mer- 
maids disport in the seas, and the earth is tenanted 
by monoculi, acephali, and anthropophagi — strange 
races of men — and stranger birds and beasts, sphynxes, 
griffins, centaurs, dragons, the phoenix, and the sala- 
mander. 

Of a later date than the Hereford map, but equally 
interesting to the geographer, is a model of the 
globe preserved in the library at Frankfort-on-the- 
Maine. Its date is supposed to be about 1520, and 
it affords a singularly accurate idea of the state of 
geographical knowledge shortly after the discovery of 
America. It is specially interesting, as showing the 
next stage of geography to that presented by the famous 
globe made at Nuremberg in 1492 by Martin Beham, 
in which it is supposed the islands are laid down 



THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 339 

in the same way as in the map used by Columbus in 
his first voyage. On Beham's globe three-fourths of 
the surface are occupied by the three continents then 
known — the Atlantic Ocean, the unknown American 
continent, and the Pacific Ocean being crowded into 
about 90 deg. of longitude. AVest of the Azores was 
the Island of Antilla, and to the south-west of the 
Cape de Verde Islands a large island marked : "In 
585, Sir Brandon came here in his ship." Seventy 
degrees west of the Canaries lay Cipangi or Japan. 
In the twenty- eight years which elapsed between the 
discovery of America and the date of the Frankfort 
globe, the shape of the new continent had been 
partially made out, and the West Indies laid down 
with tolerable correctness. The Pacific side of the 
southern continent had also been sketched in; but 
the northern portion is only represented by an 
attenuated slip. In concurrence with preconceived 
ideas, Japan is placed just off the coast of Mexico, and 
the Northern Pacific is reduced to very narrow limits ; 
but, perhaps, the most curious part of this globe is 
that which represents the Isthmus of Darien according 
to the ideas of Columbus himself, with a wide gap 
about the 10 deg. north latitude, affording ample 
passage for mariners to Japan, the Indies, and their 
fabulous wealth. 
Interesting as are these memorials of early dis- 



340 SCIENTIFIC LONDON. 

coveries, the portraits and works of more recent 
geographers are endowed with even greater attraction. 
Around the Council Eoom of the Eoyal Geographical 
Society hang portraits of Sir John Barrow and 
Captain Eichard Burton, of the gallant but ill-fated 
Lander, and the not less unfortunate Burnes, of 
Admiral Smyth, Dr. Kirk, Captain Speke, Dr. Living- 
stone, and other celebrated travellers ; while in the 
place of honour is a noble marble bust of Murchison. 
It is impossible, however, to look on the walls thus 
tenanted without regretting that the period of the 
greatest prosperity and most brilliant development of 
the Society has been saddened by the death of many 
geographers of the first rank. During the last three 
or four years the names of Murchison and Strzelecki, 
Wood and Chesney, Keith Johnston and Arrowsmith, 
Maury and Sedgwick, McClure and Livingstone, have 
been added to the roll of the illustrious dead, — but 
albeit these great leaders of scientific inquiry have 
departed from the sphere of their labours, their spirit 
of earnest devotion to pure science — for its own sake — 
still animates those who, not unworthily, essay to fill 
the void they have left behind. 



Printed hy William Moore ^ Co. 



